


The Earl

by SlippinMickeys



Series: The Regency Files [2]
Category: The X-Files
Genre: Alternate Universe - Historical, Alternate Universe - Regency, Angst, F/M, MSR, Mutual Pining, Romance, Sequel, reunited, to the rescue
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-10
Updated: 2021-03-15
Packaged: 2021-03-17 08:08:55
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 13
Words: 36,457
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29963448
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SlippinMickeys/pseuds/SlippinMickeys
Summary: Lady Dana Scully has just married William Reynard Mulder, the infamous Earl of Wexford in a whirlwind courtship meant to save both Lady Dana’s family and reputation (see ‘The Countess’). While the new Earl and Countess discover the wonders of marriage and each other, a secret from the past threatens to destroy them.
Relationships: Fox Mulder/Dana Scully
Series: The Regency Files [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2183103
Comments: 87
Kudos: 161





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This the sequel to my story The Countess. I’d suggest reading that first!
> 
> Huge thank you to Lin for being my scientific advisor on this one, and to Fiona and Amanda for the ace beta work.
> 
> This work is finished and I’ll be posting two chapters a day (three initially) until the work is completed.

He rolled his head on the pillow and was rewarded with a noseful of soft lavender-scented hair. It tickled him enough that he awoke completely, sniffing to consciousness with a feeling of patent unfamiliarity. 

He lightly brushed the hair away from his face and opened his eyes to find that he was in a strange bed in a foreign room. It took him a moment to remember that he’d fallen asleep in the countess’s chambers. Scully’s chambers. His  _ wife _ . 

So it hadn’t been a delicious dream, after all; they had married the day before. 

There was light coming in behind the thick curtains of the room and a small cloche-covered tray had been set on a table in the sitting area. There were a couple of modest trunks set just inside the door -- Scully’s personal effects, no doubt. The servants were up and about, then. When he really looked, the quality of the light suggested it was nearly late morning. 

He tended to keep country hours when he was at Henwick Priory, the family estate in Sussex, but opted for later hours when he was in Town. The Season was in full swing and the aristocratic set woke up late and went to bed later. 

He was naked under the bed’s thick coverings, and a quick peek confirmed that Scully still was as well. 

She was curled onto her side, facing away from him, the soft slope of her back arcing into the smooth, rounded shape of the two globes that formed her perfect bottom. He felt his manhood stir to life looking at her. 

As if sensing she was being observed, he watched her slowly come awake as well, rolling onto her back and stretching, cat-like, her toes pointing down as her arms raised over her head. Mulder let the covers fall gently back down. 

Her eyes fluttered open and she turned her head, pinning him with her sapphire stare. He smiled at her and she returned it, her grin shy, yet pert; a hint of licentiousness curling up her cheek. 

“Good morning,” he said, and after a brief moment decided to lean in for a soft kiss. 

“Mmm,” she said, as he returned to his own pillow, “good morning.”

His cock, which had been in a lazy state of partial-arousal since he’d swept his eyes down the length of his wife’s backside, had come fully to life when his lips made contact with hers. 

“Did you sleep well?” he asked politely, trying to ignore the part of his body that was reaching for her without any regard to civility. 

“Very,” she said and smiled, turning towards him, the satin sheet slipping down to reveal the hint of a curved breast. Damn his eyes, they slid down to look of their own volition. He had to shake himself. 

“And how are you feeling this morning?” he asked, pausing briefly before finishing with “Are you very… sore?”

He was not as experienced as his rakish reputation made him out to be, and his previous sexual encounters -- as few as there had been -- had been with much more experienced women. He had never before bedded a virgin.

“No,” she said thoughtfully, “I feel… a bit tender, but have no pain. Honestly, it feels most similar to the morning after a very long day of riding.”

He quirked an eyebrow at her and she smiled, no doubt realizing what she’d said. 

“And no wonder,” she said with a laugh.

He chuckled with her and leaned in again to steal another kiss. 

“I’m glad to hear it.” When he leaned back he nodded toward the tray on the table nearby and said, “There is some refreshment, if you wish for me to serve you?”

She shook her head and stretched again. 

“I don’t believe I wish to leave this bed,” she said, and he felt his pulse beat in his cock. 

“Stay all day if you wish it,” he said. “Unfortunately, I have some business to attend to -- the speed of our nuptials did not permit me to clear my schedule as I would have liked. You deserve a honeymoon, but I’m afraid today you’ll have to settle for an afternoon drive through Hyde Park. That is, assuming you wish to spend time with me as ardently as I wish to spend it with you.”

She reached over and ran a hand down his face, the scratch of his morning beard catching a bit on the skin of her hand.

“I would like nothing more.” She sat up, leaning on her elbows, and the sheet slid down her form, just shy of revealing her perfect, pink nipples. “I do wonder if I have anything fitting to wear for a drive. Have my trunks arrived?”

“I believe so,” he said, and when she turned back to him he was certain she saw the raw want on his face. 

Her tongue darted out to wet her lips. 

“When is your first appointment?” she asked, and let the sheet covering her fall just a little bit more. 

He reached for her in answer, and she fell atop him with a startled breath, the long silk of her auburn hair falling down to fan along his shoulder and arm. He ran the backs of his fingers up her side, just grazing them along the outer curve of her breast, and she leaned down and captured his lips with hers, her enthusiasm more than making up for her lack of experience. 

After a long bout of kissing, he flipped her expertly and began tonguing his way down her body. Her legs fell open as he descended and he smiled into her skin. He would not have blamed her if she were shy or prudish -- young ladies were raised from the cradle to place their sexual virtue above almost anything else, and years of that kind of thinking were sure to impart an austerity that could be difficult to overcome -- but Scully seemed to embrace the marital bed and the carnality that could come with it. He was a lucky, lucky man. 

She gave a breathy sigh when he ran his tongue up her seam, her sex already dewy with want. She tasted sweet, with a honeyed tang he had already committed to memory. He laved at her, rubbing his erection with one hand, as sexually excited as a stripling. He honed in on the swollen nub at her crest, and it did not take long before she started breathing harder, her crisis imminent. 

He encouraged her with muffled words and finally she broke, her hips surging up into his mouth, a cry on her lips. He licked at her gently until she settled and then moved up and laid his head next to her on the pillow. 

“You’re beautiful when you come,” he said, searching her face. She was a rare beauty. He’d wondered, after he’d met her two nights ago in that garden, if it were merely the magic of the moonlight and the setting that had captured him so -- that had compelled him to offer her her first kiss and so set into motion the wheels of fate that had brought them here. But no. Her face was exquisite even here in the dim light of her chamber. A composition not even a master could better on canvas.

“Is that what they call it?” she said and he nodded mutely, running a light finger up the center of her torso until it found her chin, which he turned toward himself for a kiss. 

“The French call it  _ le petit mort _ ,” he mumbled into her lips. 

“The little death?” she said, smiling into his lips. “Oh, I like that.”

So did he. He would not press himself upon her this morning, he’d decided. He was certain that even though she’d insisted that she was not in pain, another assault so quickly on such tender flesh would surely do more harm than good. He had resigned himself to a morning of discomfort when he felt her light touch on his stomach, her hands moving over him slowly but surely. 

“It feels good when you touch me,” she said, “does it feel good when I touch you?”

He swallowed hard and nodded, not trusting himself to speak. 

“Show me how,” she said, and he reached down and grabbed her hand, guiding it to where he wanted it most. When he pressed her fingers around his aching cock and showed her best how to stroke him, he felt his eyes roll back into his head. She was a quick study and seemed to almost intuit what he liked best, so it was not long before he reached out and put a hand on her arm. 

“Stand back,” he panted, though she was not standing, “I am… close.”

But she did not move, and instead began pumping him with even more enthusiasm until he threw his head back, giving up the ghost. On a wave of ecstasy, he felt himself spurting hotly into her hand, and she made a noise, though it was one of surprise rather than revulsion, for which he would be thankful when his faculties finally returned to him. 

“Fascinating,” she said after a moment. 

Spent, he took a deep breath and turned to her, cocking his head in question. 

She was sitting up, propping herself up on one arm, her long hair over her shoulders, the sweet buds of her nipples peeking out from in between the glossy strands.

“We spoke of science, and my interest in it,” she clarified, looking at him, “I find the mechanics of the act of copulation most intriguing.”

He smiled at her. “Should you form any hypotheses that might need testing, I’m more than eager to assist you in proving any theories,” he said, and she gave him the smile of a minx.

XxXxXxXxXxX

“My apologies,” he said shortly as he strode into his study. Mr. Flynn, his solicitor, was sitting in the chair across from his desk, looking bored. 

Flynn waved a hand dismissively in the air. “I charge you by the hour, my lord,” he said. “What you do with that time is at your discretion.”

Mulder sat, willing himself not to go pink thinking about how he’d just spent his discretionary time.

“Did you have time to go over the marriage contract?” Mulder asked.

“Yes,” Flynn said, “a footman brought it to my office first thing this morning.”

Mulder nodded and the lawyer leveled a look at him. 

“You were… most generous to your new wife’s family, my lord,” he said.

It was Mulder’s turn to wave a dismissive hand. “Is it otherwise in order?” he asked. 

“Yes,” Flynn said, and Mulder nodded at him.

At that moment a maid came in carrying a tea tray, which she took her time setting up on the small table in the middle of the room. 

Mulder flashed a look at her, and then one to Flynn. 

“And on the other matters?” he asked. 

Flynn sat up straight and cleared his throat, also darting a look to the maid, who was humming quietly to herself. 

“Yes,” Flynn said, “I have been looking into both. On the first, I have been able to find no evidence to back up the gentleman’s claims. No debts are on record at any bank or other institution. I have even gone so far as to check wager books at White’s and some of the other clubs. Nothing.” 

Mulder leaned back in his chair, and the maid finally curtsied and made her way out of the room. 

“It is difficult to find evidence of something that likely doesn’t exist,” he said with a sigh. 

“Quite,” Flynn replied. 

“Nevertheless,” Mulder said, “keep looking.” 

“Indeed,” said the man. “Now, on the second matter…” He reached into his pocket and pulled out an envelope with an aged patina. On its front was scrawled a large black X. Flynn rose to his feet and handed it to Mulder. “In this case, I’ve also discovered nothing. However, it is a delicate matter, the inquiry of which requires both skill and discretion. It may be time to hire an investigative firm?”

Mulder sighed heavily, and set the envelope on his desk. “I’m afraid you may be right, Flynn.” His words were a dismissal. 

Flynn shook Mulder’s hand briefly, giving him a curt nod.

When the door closed behind him, Mulder sat back down at his desk, shooting a troubled look at the envelope sitting in the middle of it, the large ‘X’ upon it as damning as a pirate’s Black Spot.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please note that I have included the Tailpiece from The Countess in the middle of this chapter. Because I started The Earl immediately following Chapter 4 of The Countess (ie, immediately following their wedding night), chronologically that’s where the Tailpiece fell. If it looks familiar, it is! (Minor changes were made to details for the purposes of plot.)

When her husband strode back into her chambers later that afternoon, Scully was standing next to her maid Prudence, looking with consternation at a scattering of clothing that had been laid across the bed and various other pieces of furniture. 

“Perhaps the daffodil?” Prudence suggested helpfully. 

“It is lovely, but five years old,” Scully said, “I’m afraid I hadn’t stopped growing when it was made for me, and shows a bit too much ankle. I had planned to let it down, but never got around to it.” 

“I’d be happy to do it for you, my lady,” Prudence said, but Scully frowned at her. 

“That is most kind of you, Prudence, but it will take you hours to do, and I’m supposed to be dressed already.”

Scully finally looked at Mulder, who was standing several feet away with his hands behind his back, a staid and patient look upon his face. 

“The phaeton is ready when  _ you _ are, Scully,” he said kindly. 

Scully felt as though she could wilt to the floor. “I have nothing to wear,” she said, to Mulder’s raised brows. 

“It may come as a surprise to you,” he said, “but you stand before me in a frock, looking as lovely as ever.”

Prudence’s face was downcast in deference to their conversation, but Scully could see a small smile blossom on the girl’s face. 

Scully looked down at the aforementioned dress. 

“It  _ is _ lovely,” she said, “but not suitable for a ride in the park, which is a place to see and be seen, and I want to look my best sitting next to you.”

Mulder strode over to her and took her hand, then turned to Prudence. 

“Prudence, would you mind telling the groom waiting with the phaeton to take it back to the stables and bring around the coach?”

Prudence curtsied and hurried out of the room. 

Scully raised her eyes to Mulder’s when the door snapped shut. 

“My apologies,” she said, “I have felt these last few years as though I were someone’s poor relation, and I’m afraid the whole of my wardrobe -- save for a few dresses borrowed from my sister -- have the same look.”

Mulder raised her hand to his lips and kissed it. 

“Your frocks are as lovely as you are -- and with a beauty as radiant as yours, I find it difficult to imagine anyone paying the least bit of attention to your dress when your face sits only inches above it.”

Scully felt her heart give an extra beat in her chest at his compliment, and she squeezed the hand he was still holding. 

“That may well be true for the men,” she said, “but the ladies beside them are looking only at clothes and jewels and judging one’s worth on that of one’s wardrobe.”

She had been the subject of more than her share of ostensibly polite verbal jabs over the last several years, as her father’s debt began to accrue, and more than a few cutting looks. She was proud to be standing next to Mulder, and wanted him to be proud to stand next to her. 

“Your worth is priceless to me,” Mulder said, “so I think what you wear should perhaps reflect that.”

Scully looked skeptically at the frocks draped over the various furniture in the room. Mulder smiled at her and pulled her hand toward the door. 

“Come,” he said, “we’ll go shopping.”

XxXxXxXxXxX

Scully dropped into the divan in her chambers and kicked off her shoes. She was exhausted: feet aching from so much walking and standing, skin feeling like a pincushion from being measured and fitted at the modiste; she was dead on her feet. 

Mulder gave a light knock on the door that led from his chamber to hers before popping his head through. He saw her reclining and walked over to sit next to her. 

“You look as tired as I feel,” he said gently, and she turned to smile at him. “Would you… prefer to sleep alone in your chambers tonight?” he hedged. 

The thought of falling into bed and sleeping for a week held more than a little appeal, but she could feel the warmth from Mulder’s leg where it just touched hers and she remembered drifting off in the heat of his arms the night before. It had been wonderful. But perhaps he wished to sleep in his own chambers. 

“Would you?” she asked, giving him the opportunity to gracefully decline her company. 

In answer he reached out and ran a finger gently along her jaw until it rested on her chin. He leaned in to give her a soft kiss. 

“Never,” he said, letting his hand fall. 

She moved in to return his kiss, but his head turned the wrong way at the last minute and they bumped noses instead. Then they both opened their mouths to apologize and instantly closed them, thinking the other was about to speak. They both laughed awkwardly. 

Finally, Mulder reached out and steadied her face with both hands, leaning in to give her a long, lingering kiss. 

“We’ll get better at this,” he whispered. 

“Oh?” she said, feeling the light flutter of desire in her womb. 

“We shall need lots of practice,” he smiled into her lips. 

XxX

Prudence came back to her not long after she had finished her breakfast in her room the next morning and helped her dress. 

“Lord Wexford wishes to see you in his study, my lady,” she said. 

When she had awoken, Mulder had been gone from their bed, a scribbled, sweet note lying on the pillow where his head had lain.

Scully smiled at her maid and followed obediently through the maze of hallways and stairs of Wexford House. It would take her an age to learn her way around. When Mulder had told her of the scope and grandeur of Henwick Priory, the family estate in Sussex, she thought she’d be lucky to memorize Wexford House by Season’s end, and that it would take her years to learn her way around “The Priory,” as Mulder called it. 

Her skirts swished rhythmically around her legs as she walked -- the frock she was wearing one of ten new ready-to-wear dresses that she’d bought the day before on their whirlwind shopping trip through London. He’d insisted on these in addition to the order for twenty more that were in with the best  _ modiste _ in London -- the finest silks and satins in the most fashionable colors. He had told her he wanted her to be the best dressed woman in Europe, and she had no doubt after all of these purchases she would be at the top of the list. It had been so odd to hear whispers in all the shops of “ _ the Countess of Wexford _ ” and know that they had been referring to  _ her _ . 

Prudence finally stopped in front of a large oak door, stained in a dark reddish brown, and curtsied. 

When Scully pushed her way inside, Mulder was standing behind an imposing mahogany desk, speaking with Mr. Bixby, who stood -- as ever -- as ramrod straight as the most obedient soldier. 

“...and please see that we are not, under any circumstances, disturbed,” Mulder said. 

“Yes, my lord,” said Bixby who turned on his heel and closed the door behind him. 

The smile that blossomed across Mulder’s face when he saw his wife walk in past the butler made her stomach do a flip. 

“Scully,” he said, “thank you for coming.”

He stepped from around the desk and met her half-way into the room, leaning down to press a gentle kiss to her cheek. 

“Was there something you wanted?” she asked, taking a brief moment to savor the smell of him -- clover and soap, and a tangy, masculine scent that was just indefinably  _ him _ . She was meant to be meeting with Mrs. Paxton, the housekeeper, in less than an hour in an effort to take over some of the duties normally overseen by the countess. 

He lowered himself onto the arm of the sofa that sat in the center of the room and looked at her a moment before answering. 

“I just wanted to see you,” he said, smiling at her sheepishly. She softened inside. Everything he did seemed affectionately calculated to bring her to her knees, and yet she knew he was just being himself. 

She walked up to where he sat, his eyes level with hers from his perch, and ruffled a hand briefly through his hair. 

“What have I done to deserve you?” she asked.

“I have asked myself the same question once an hour for the last two days,” he said. 

She smiled at him and shook her head, regarding him thoughtfully. 

“How are you so perfect?” she asked, and he tilted his head at her in question. “You seem perfect,” she went on. “A perfect gentleman. A perfect host. A perfect…”

“Lover, I hope?” he said, his voice gravely and quiet. He stood and brought a hand to her hip and she felt the initial thrum of lust.

“That too,” she said, and he grinned at her and rubbed his thumb along her hip bone. “But what I mean is,” she went on, “I have yet to find a fault.”

“Ah,” he said, tipping his head back, “my faults are legion. But at present only one seems glaringly apparent: the fact that I should, as we speak, be meeting with my steward and attending to my business.”

“And yet you’re here with me,” she said, and he moved his free hand to her other hip.

“I’m here with you,” he said. “I have business to attend to, but I find all I want to do is bed my wife.”

“I cannot speak for your steward, but your wife would not categorize that as a fault.”

“And what would she categorize it as?” he asked, leaning down until his lips grazed her neck.

He was making it very hard to think. 

“Dutiful lust is not something that can be categorized or easily referenced, I should think,” she said, her voice lowering an octave and taking on a breathy quality. 

“ _ Dutiful lust _ is it?” he said, his voice muffled by her skin.

He had grabbed handfuls of her skirts and was hiking them slowly up off the floor.

“Dutiful,” she repeated, having to think very hard in order to construct even a simple sentence. “You have expressed some interest in siring an heir, if I am not mistaken. Is that not a duty?”

By now his lips had migrated to the tops of her breasts, nosing her fichu aside to expose as much skin as possible. 

“An important one,” he mumbled, then darted out his tongue to lick at her flesh. She felt the sweep of desire pool in her center. 

“Then I find,” she had to pause to suppress a moan, “your single-minded application to its achievement... faultless.” 

The time for talking had ended. He had managed to pull her skirts more than halfway up her legs without having to bend over -- no small feat -- and moved his hands to her behind, gripping her firmly and lifting her up easily in order to sit her on the surface of his desk. She heard papers slide to the ground at their feet as he moved his hands up to the bodice of her dress and yanked it down sharply. She heard the popping of a few seams and briefly lamented the damage to her newest frock until it was forgotten altogether with the feel of his lips and hands on her newly bared breasts. 

She worried briefly that a servant might walk into his study but then remembered his words to Mr. Bixby as she had entered the room; he’d been planning this seduction all the while. 

His hands dropped from her bosom (though his mouth did not) and she heard him temporarily struggling with the flap at the front of his trousers. Then she felt cool air on the tops of her thighs as he flung her skirts up, and before she could compose another thought, he had his manhood in his hand, rubbing it once then twice up the drenched seam of her sex, before pushing into her heat with a throaty groan. 

God, it was heaven. The heat of him -- the fullness -- was it really only three days ago that he’d taken her for the first time and it had felt like he was splitting her in two? This hadn’t the hint of the pain from her wedding night, nor the awkward fumbling of the next day. This? This was rapture. 

Mulder brought one hand to her chin, his massive grip seeming to span the length of her skull, then swept his thumb up and into her mouth. 

She tasted the tang of ink, the dry bitterness of paper, the faintest sapor of male skin; unclean and rich as marzipan. She sucked the digit into her mouth as he had done to hers the night before and he groaned and closed his eyes, pumping into her with renewed strength. She felt the massive behemoth of the desk under her begin to move slightly and heard the crack of the ink pot tipping over. Inspired, she squeezed her inner muscles around him and his eyes snapped shut. 

“Scuh-“ he hissed.

He pulled his thumb suddenly from her mouth with a pop and smeared her saliva onto the aching bud of her center; she saw stars pop in her vision. She tipped her head forward and leaned it against his chest, his skin hot under the starchy rough of his shirt. He was pumping into her almost frantically now -- his thighs smacking into the desk with every deep, penetrating thrust -- she grabbed onto his shoulders and held on for dear life. 

Items and papers were falling off the desk unabated but she gave them no more than a passing thought, her attention now solely focused on the frenzied rubbing of his thumb and the hot steel shaft driving relentlessly up into her. Her breasts bounced and swayed with his movements and she began to sense a shift in his rhythm: he was close to his climax. She listened to his ragged breaths and focused on the keen feeling at her center. It was as though there were a mass of ribbons floating in the breeze -- as from the top of a May Pole -- and all she had to do was grab on to the right one and hold on tight and it would carry her away toward her ecstasy. Ah! Just there -- the feeling she was just starting to recognize -- she held onto it and in a flash she was carried away to a place beyond thought. She felt Mulder follow quickly after her. 

After a moment, she came back to herself, the heavy weight of Mulder’s head resting on her shoulder. The air in the study was thick with the musk of sex and spilled ink, and was silent but for the soft ticking of a mantle clock over the fireplace and their own breathing.

“Have I killed you, husband?” she asked quietly and he chuckled and lifted his head off of her, pressing a long kiss to the point where her jaw met her neck.

“No,” he said, “but when the time comes, that’s how I wish to go.”

She felt him slide out of her, and he tucked himself gingerly back into his trousers, buttoning the fells with a few efficient flicks of his fingers. He then reached into his coat pocket and pulled out a now-familiar handkerchief, which he handed her without a word. After cleaning herself up, she handed it back with a shy look and slid off the desk and to the floor, her skirts falling back into place. She pulled her dress back over her breasts and tucked in her fichu, determining the damage to her dress was not as bad as she had feared.

She turned and surveyed the wreckage of his desk. Mulder ran a hand through his hair and sighed. 

“I would ring for a maid, but I feel as though we should clean up our own mess. What do you think?”

“I heartily agree,” she said, and then knelt to the floor, sweeping together the fallen parchment into more manageable stacks. 

“I do hope these weren’t in any sort of order,” she said, and he laughed. 

“ _ That _ I will leave to my steward,” he said. 

She rose with the pile of papers and turned to deposit them on the desk when a thick envelope fell out of the stack and onto the floor. She reached down to retrieve it and saw that the envelope had no name or address written upon it, just a large, thick, black ‘X’ scratched across the front. 

When she stood, Mulder glanced at the letter and a look she couldn’t identify washed briefly over his face. 

“Here,” he said quickly, “I'll take that.”

She handed it over without a word and he crossed behind her to the desk and dropped it into a drawer, locking it in with the twist of a key that he then dropped into his pocket. 

“What shall we do about the ink?” she said, and he heaved a sigh and then smiled at her. 

“I think we shall have to ring for a maid after all.”

Scully took it upon herself to walk over to the wall and give the cord one swift pull. Just then, there was a light knock at the door. Mulder strode to it and opened it, revealing the impassable face of Mr. Bixby. 

“Apologies, my lord,” Bixby said, “but there is a gentleman here who says he has urgent business with you and would not leave until he saw you.”

Mulder nodded slowly. 

“Did he give his name?”

With that, Bixby handed over a calling card. Mulder glanced down at it and Scully saw his posture change and his jaw clench. 

“See him in,” Mulder said brusquely. 

A moment later, Bixby stepped back and a gentleman Scully had never seen before walked into the room as though he owned it. He was an older gentleman, tall and thin with a sharply cut suit and a craggy face. The sharp tang of tobacco smoke wafted in with him, and Scully crinkled her nose and started to walk back toward her husband. 

Her movement caught the gentleman’s eye and he swung his gaze toward her, looking at her with an intensity that sent a shiver up her spine. When she reached Mulder’s side, he reached down and slid his warm hand into hers, squeezing it, never taking his eyes off the visiting gentleman. 

“Lady Wexford, I presume,” the man said, his voice like the hiss of a snake.

Scully gave the gentleman a slight nod. 

“And you, sir?” she asked. 

The gentleman removed his hat and swung it up under his arm, giving her a slight bow. When he opened his mouth to answer, Mulder interrupted him. 

“This gentleman is Mr. Spender, and I should like to know what business he has here that so urgently requires my attention.”

Spender’s eyes narrowed at Mulder and he took another few steps into the room, lowering himself into a chair without an invitation. 

“I came to offer my congratulations on your marriage,” Spender said, leaning back in the chair. 

“And that was urgent, was it?” Mulder said, his voice tight. 

Whatever relationship her new husband had with this man, Scully thought, it was not an amicable one. 

“It is when we had an understanding that you would marry my daughter,” Spender said, his voice turning slightly colder. 

Scully’s stomach dropped in her gut and she turned to look at Mulder, who was now staring daggers at Spender. 

“We had no such understanding, sir,” Mulder said, “I said I would _consider_ courting your daughter. I considered it, and very obviously declined it,” he said, raising slightly the hand he still had clasped around Scully’s own. 

The man’s nostrils flared in anger and Scully, still reeling, wondered in mortification if the room still smelled like the musk of sex. He then began looking around the study as if in appraisal. 

“This room has changed much since it belonged to your father,” Spender said. 

“You’ll find a lot has changed since my father’s time as the Earl of Wexford,” Mulder said, dropping Scully’s hand and taking a step forward. She saw Spender tense slightly. 

“Good day, sir,” Mulder said, dismissing him. 

Spender rose slowly, maintaining an air of superiority. “I’ll get what’s owed to me,” Spender said, slowly, but with a hint of malice, “one way or another.” 

“I said good day,” Mulder hissed.

With one last cold flash of a look at Scully, Spender turned on his heel and left the room. 

The second the door closed behind him, Mulder turned to Scully. “Are you all right?” Mulder asked, his voice all concern. 

“I-” Scully started to say. 

She was still feeling a bit of shock, but it was wearing off. Though they had become quite close in the last few days, this was still a man she didn’t know well, and he was bound to have a past. She had one, too. She gave him a shaky smile.

“Yes,” she said. “There is clearly a lot we still need to learn of each other.”

Mulder reached out and grabbed her hand, bringing it to his lips and holding it there. 

“Anything you wish to know, please ask it,” he said earnestly. 

Scully’s curiosity won out over her wish to remain amenable. 

“Did you really court Mr. Spender’s daughter?” she said, trying to keep her voice steady. “You would be within your rights to have done so,” she hastened to add, “as we had not even met a week ago. Though I would not wish to be the reason the girl has a broken heart-” at that Mulder cut her off. 

“I did  _ not _ ,” he said, then sucked his lip into his mouth, as if searching for how to explain. He released her hand and sat heavily onto a small sofa. Scully lowered herself next to him. 

“C.G.B. Spender approached me several months ago. He said he was calling in a debt owed to him by my father. He could produce no evidence of such a debt — merely stating that he and my father had an understanding— and my solicitor and other contacts have been unable to turn up any trace of it, either. When I refused to pay, he grew incensed. A month later, he approached me at a ball, apologizing for his behavior. At his side was his daughter; a shy woman, older than yourself. He then brought up -- in front of his daughter, no less -- the idea of my courting her, saying that a marriage between us would absolve whatever debt he still thought sat between us. Not wanting to embarrass the young lady, I said I would consider courtship. I have not seen the man since, until today.”

“I see,” Scully said, putting her hand lightly on his knee. 

“Perhaps I should pay the man, just to be rid of him,” Mulder said, shaking his head. 

Scully thought of the way Spender had looked at her, cold and calculating. “Perhaps you should,” she said, “though then, I suspect, the line of men standing at your door making similar claims would stretch all the way to the Thames.” She stood then and brushed out her skirts. “I need to be along,” she said, “I am supposed to be meeting with Mrs. Paxton.”

Mulder rose as well and leaned in to kiss her cheek. His eyes followed her as she walked to the door and then through it.

XxXxXxXxXxX

_ Damn the man _ , Mulder thought. Spender had gone from a thorn in his side to someone who had made a threat against him -- however veiled -- with his new wife in the room, no less. Mulder had never been much of a pugilist, but he wanted to hit something right then, and hard. 

When he’d calmed himself sufficiently, he pulled out a fresh piece of paper and a new inkpot from his desk. Flynn was right. It was time to bring in a professional. He had a friend who was one of the Bow Street Runners, and decided to write him a letter, seeing what he could find out about Spender, and just how dangerous the man was. 

When he’d finished, he went to call on a footman to give the letter to Mr. Bixby, but found Bixby himself at the study door. 

“Correspondence for you, my lord,” Bixby said, handing over a small stack. 

Mulder shuffled through them quickly and stopped when he saw the familiar scrawl of an old friend. He tore it open and smiled. 


	3. Chapter 3

“A sporting holiday?” Scully asked, smiling, “Oh, that sounds lovely.” She had paused with her soup spoon halfway to her mouth, Mulder fairly bursting to tell her of the invitation he’d received, over dinner.

Mulder smiled at her, encouraged. He set down his wine glass, his soup sitting in front of him, uneaten.

“I got the invitation just today,” he said, “Sir Byers is an old friend from Eton -- a baronet with a small estate in Kent. As a sporting holiday, one month from now -- I would be expected to go shooting with the gentleman at least part of the time, but a fortnight away… we could treat it as a honeymoon.”

The thought of the fresh air and quiet of the country sounded heavenly. She smiled warmly at him and lowered her spoon back into her bowl. 

“Should I tell him we accept?” Mulder asked. 

“Please do,” she said. 

Mulder looked as pleased as anything, and went on to tell her about school-related hijinks with much enthusiasm. When the final course of the meal had been taken away by the footmen, he sobered and looked at her earnestly. 

“I hope you know how pleased I am that you came into the garden the night of the Halford ball,” he said. 

“I hope you know how pleased I am that you decided to kiss me there.” He smiled at her. “Why  _ were _ you in the garden that night, Mulder? I never thought to ask.”

“I was hiding.”

“Hiding?!”

He looked chagrined. 

“Miss Spender was there,” he said, “at the ball. I had of course already made the decision not to court her, but I didn’t have the heart to tell her. Not in such a public setting, anyway. It would have amounted to giving her the cut direct. I loathe her father, but she’s a young lady who doesn’t deserve that kind of treatment.”

“Or that kind of father.”

“Indeed.”

“Well. I suppose Miss Spender’s loss is my gain.”

“And mine,” he said, and raised his glass to his wife. 

XxXxXxXxXxX

“You’ll have to tell me all about it, my lady,” Prudence said, while she affixed a ribbon through Scully’s perfectly coiffed hair. “I’ve heard it’s the most splendid sight imaginable.”

Mulder was taking her to Vauxhall for the evening. Scully had always wanted to go. It was said to be the most spacious pleasure garden in all of England, filled with high hedges and trees, and had gravel-paved walkways and promenades. There were pavilions, lodges, groves, grottoes, lawns, porticoes and rotundas; the whole of it illuminated with an infinite number of lamps in every color. Mulder had reserved them a booth not far from the Royal Box and had promised to waltz with her until she could no longer stand. 

She reached her hand up and placed it over Prudence’s. “I won’t leave out a single detail,” she said. 

Prudence smiled at her in the mirror. “You’ll fit in perfectly,” she said, “no other lady could compare to your beauty tonight.”

“You’re too kind, Prudence. I thank you for all of your help.” She tapped a bit of color into her cheeks and took as deep a breath as her corset would allow. “Is everything packed and ready for tomorrow?”

They would be leaving for Kent in the morning for a fortnight at Ashford Park with Sir Byers and his other guests. 

“It is, my lady,” said Prudence, though her face had fallen. 

“Prudence,” she said, turning from the mirror to face her maid, “whatever is the matter?”

“I shouldn’t be saying anything, Lady Wexford,” she said. “It isn’t my place.”

“I hope you will anyway,” said Scully gently, trying to catch Prudence’s eye. 

“It is Samuel, my lady,” Prudence said, stealing a look at the closed door of the chamber, as if afraid Mr. Bixby or Mrs. Paxton might come barging in, demanding to know why she was speaking to the lady of the house about the workings below stairs. 

“The footman?” Scully clarified. 

“Yes,” Prudence said, “he was taken ill, not two days ago. Very ill. He may not survive. He had been looking forward to traveling to Kent with you and the Earl. He was honored when Mr. Bixby picked him to accompany you.”

“Oh that is very sad,” Scully said. “Is he being well attended to?”

“Oh yes,” Prudence rushed to assure her, “Lord Wexford insisted upon his own physician being sent below stairs. It sent the scullery maids all in a whirl.”

Scully could sense there was something else Prudence wanted to tell her. She stayed quiet and Prudence went on. 

“The footman who was hired to replace Samuel is being sent to Kent instead.”

It seemed as though she were about to go on when there was a knock at the door connecting her and Mulder’s chambers and he stuck his head through the doorway. Prudence nodded at Scully, and curtsied at Mulder.

“Thank you, Prudence,” Mulder said, excusing her, “you have done a fine job. The Countess looks exquisite.”

Prudence smiled and left the room. 

“Are you ready?” he asked her. 

She stood and turned to him.

He nearly took her breath away. He was wearing a new coat, cut very tight to his figure, the shirt beneath it was white as a cloud and the collar impeccably starched. His cravat was folded with the utmost care and pinned with a large emerald that complimented his eyes, a perfect match to his silk waistcoat. The buckskin trousers he wore clung to him like a second skin and his Hessians had been rubbed to a mirror shine. 

“Whatever you are paying your valet, you should double it,” Scully said to him as she took his arm. “If the Prince Regent is at Vauxhall tonight, he’s likely to try to hire him out from under you.”

“It wouldn’t do to let Mr. Valadeo hear you say that,” Mulder said, as he opened the door of her chamber and held it open for her, “it will go straight to his head.”

XxXxXxXxXxX

As Mulder stepped off the boat and onto the island on which the gardens of Vauxhall sat, Scully pulled up short next to him, her mouth agape at the sight before her. There was a grand entrance gate and a long series of stairs that led up to where the gardens really started, though there were colorful lanterns lining the steps and perfectly groomed shrubs running along the rise. 

“Come,” he leaned down and whispered in her ear, “there is much to see.”

When they had finally been seated at their reserved booth, Scully finally stopped looking around and said, quite earnestly:

“My apologies, Mulder. I have been struck speechless by the splendor.”

He had been so himself his first time at the gardens when he was but fifteen. He had been held captive by a balloon ascension -- a special event that evening that he had not seen since -- great balls of colorful fabric taking men to the stars. 

When the waiter arrived, Mulder ordered champagne, beef, ham and salad, as well as the arrack punch that was so well known in Vauxhall that the mention of it always brought him back to the gardens. 

When they had eaten their fill, he rose from the booth and pulled a watch from his pocket. 

“Come along,” he said to Scully, “we must hurry or we will miss it.”

“Miss what?” she said, her mouth quirking up into an intrigued smile that sent no small amount of blood rushing below his waist. 

When she rose, he noticed the jealous looks of the other gentleman nearby, and could hardly blame them. She was a rare beauty and carried about her both an innocence and an erotogenic mien that confused his senses and assaulted his deep-seated and well-bred commitment to public propriety. In short, he was continually beset by an aching cockstand whenever she was near. It was downright inconvenient.

He walked her as quickly as he could through the gravel lined promenades and turned down a walkway that led into a line of trees. It was darker here and empty of people. Perfect. He found a small bench along the path and sat with her there, leaning back and looking around them in anticipation. 

“Mulder what-” she began to say, but he stilled her with a hand to her knee. 

“Shh,” he said, and pointed into the trees above them. 

Their timing could not have been better. 

Suddenly the lamps that were hung from the trees above and around them -- hundreds of them -- thousands -- began to light one by one in every color of the rainbow. She inhaled in surprise. 

The lamps were all connected by a series of fuses he knew, but even with that knowledge, it was no less magical. After a moment the quiet of the night resumed but the lights remained, a sparkling wonderland, shining arcs of color throughout the small forest. 

Scully stood and walked into the trees a little way, her eyes turned to the lights. He followed her. 

“I feel as though Titania and Oberon and their lot will come prancing through at any moment,” she said, her voice almost a whisper, as if she were worried any noise might break the spell of the place. 

He moved to stand in front of her and ran his finger from the top of her jaw to her chin, tilting her face up to his for a kiss. He let his lips linger at hers, feeling their connection in the depths of his chest, to his very soul. 

“A fairyland fit for a countess,” he whispered. 

“I must know how it all works,” she said, “do you suppose they use some sort of timer? Did you know, there is a Chemist by the name of-“ 

He kissed her again, deeply, keeping his eyes open until he saw her own aquamarine orbs roll back into her head. She ran her fingers up through his hair, pulling him toward her, and all rational thought left him. He kissed her, drinking her in, pulling her body flush against his so that she could feel how much he wanted her. Finally, she pulled back. 

“Sea water,” she said. 

He looked at her in confusion, his hands still framing her face. 

“My father told me that at sea, as thirsty as you may get, drinking sea water will only make you thirstier. Your thirst can never be slaked. Being with you… it’s like drinking sea water. The more I’m with you, the more I want you,” she said. “My thirst for you cannot be quenched.”

His heart clenched just as his groin ached, and he moved her with deliberate slowness backwards until he had her up against a large oak tree. She looked up at him with blind trust. 

“And I you,” he said, his voice a low rumble, “I want you even now.”

He leaned down and bit her lightly on the neck, and in answer she moaned quietly. He licked the skin he’d bitten and ran a hand into the front of her gown, pulling her breasts so that they spilled over the top of it. 

She had absolutely perfect breasts -- a Renaissance painter could not have improved them. Her nipples were the same pinkish-red as the soft lips of her sex and the mounds themselves, soft handfuls of pure delight. He lowered his mouth to them. They tasted of berries. How on earth was it that they tasted of berries? If he wasn’t inside of her soon, he would burst.

He reached down and unbuttoned the fells of his trousers, freeing himself. She reached out with greedy hands and wrapped one around his shaft, the other going lower until it was gently cradling the soft sac underneath. He groaned into her bosom. 

Reaching down, he gathered the skirts of her gown, pulling them up and over her hips, then reached down to find her dewy center, only to encounter more layers of tulle and fluff. 

“Blasted petticoats,” he grumbled, and she emitted a delicious peal of laughter that he decided was his duty to elicit from her at every future opportunity. She reached down to help him, and at last he moved his hand over the humid rise of her mons, sliding a finger into her to find her slick as a ripe peach. He could take it no longer. Shaft in one hand, he maneuvered himself to her slippery entrance. With the other he pulled her knee until it was over his hip, and then slid straight home. 

They both moaned. He would not last long. Whatever magic was in the air had riled him to a fevered peak. He licked a thumb and reached down to rub it along the swollen nub at the crest of her sex. She panted and grabbed his waistcoat in both hands, grinding her hips into him on a lusty breath. 

He felt like a rutting beast surrounded by the cold fresh air of the night, amongst the calls of owls and crickets. He lifted her other leg until he was holding her up completely, her back to the rough bark of the oak, her breasts bouncing above the top of her lavender gown. He would never see a more erotic sight, he was sure of it. 

She began a low, long moan in the back of her throat that he was learning meant she was close to reaching her climax and he increased his efforts with his thumb with a renewed vigor. In moments she was coming apart at the seams, going limp in his arms. He pulled her tightly to him and felt his own climax rush upon him, and he locked his knees so as not to drop her, thrusting into her once, twice, then one final time. He held her solidly in his arms but sagged against the tree behind them. After a moment, her legs dropped back to the ground, first one, then the other, and he felt himself slide out of her. 

One bracing breath and she pulled herself to her full, if modest height, her skirts falling gracefully back into place. She pulled her gown up over her exposed breasts, reached a hand up to tuck a piece of loose hair expertly back into her coif and gave him a small smile. 

“Shall we return to the pavilion?” she said with practiced dignity, “I believe I hear a waltz.”

He was in love. Abject, soul-quaking, irrevocable love. 


	4. Chapter 4

“It should not be far now,” Mulder sighed from beside her. 

He had his head bent down to look out the window of the coach, rain beading down the glass on the other side. The whole of the day had been dreary, and they had each been fitfully dozing for the last several hours, sitting opposite each other.

“Are you comfortable?” he asked her.

In truth, she was not. Stiff and tired and in dire need of a bath, she wanted nothing more than to never see the inside of another carriage. 

“Of course,” she said instead. 

The coach was beautifully appointed — one of the finest she had ever traveled in. Plush velveteen seats and a rich lacquered interior, it was obvious that Mulder had spared no expense. 

She moved from her bench to sit next to him, peering out the window herself, jostling into him as the wheels of the coach hit a rut in the road. 

In the carriage behind them rode Prudence and Mr. Valadeo along with their luggage. Two of their grooms, Peter and Terrence, rode behind with their personal horses (Mulder’s stallion Hercule, whom he entrusted to no one but Terrence, and her wedding gift, a beautiful silver mare named Queen). Their newest footman Alexander sat up with the driver as added security against brigands.  _ What a sight we must make, she thought. _

As a child and the daughter of a marquess, she had traveled with an even bigger entourage between London and their country estate, but as the years passed and their fortune dwindled, she had grown accustomed to traveling with less and less, eventually journeying by the mail coach when she went to Town at all. 

“I think you will like Miss Modeski, John’s fiancée,” he said. “She is almost as well-read as yourself.” 

She smiled at him, and he leaned in to kiss her, chaste at first, but lingering, as though he had other plans. She pulled back when the coach turned onto a gravel-lined lane. 

“For a man who claims that his reputation is unearned, you kiss like an unrepentant rake, sir,” she said. 

He grinned at her.

“You grin like one, too.”

“And what experience do you have of rakes, Lady Dana?” he asked, strumming his thumb along her cheek. 

“It’s rumored that I married one.”

“Your wit is as sharp as your teeth,” he said complimentary.

“You would know,” she said cheekily, and he ran his hand once over his left pectoral, where Scully had placed a love bite only that morning.

He shook his head at her, a little in awe, and then glanced once again out the window. “We’re here,” he said. 

She dipped her head to look out the window once more. The granite facade of the manse was almost silver in the grey, overcast light of the late afternoon. It must have had nearly a dozen large windows just on this side of the estate alone. 

“I thought you said Sir Byers had a small estate,” she said. 

Mulder shrugged.

“Your father is a marquess,” he said, simply “I would imagine his entitled estates are vast.”

They were, though they had fallen into disrepair when the funds to keep them dwindled. Perhaps now they could be restored to their previous grandeur. 

“Nevertheless, I’m not a little intimidated to be the mistress of Henwick Priory if you consider this to be a  _ small estate _ .”

He grabbed her hand and kissed it. 

“I have no doubt you will excel at it, and that it will be the very least of your talents.”

The carriage pulled to a halt in front of the large french doors and she heard the footman Alexander jump down onto the shell drive. A moment later the carriage door opened and he extended his white gloved hand to help her out. 

An average-sized gentleman with an average face came walking out the door of the estate, a pretty blond woman following him only a step or two behind. The man had kind eyes, brown hair and a short cinnamon colored beard. 

“Byers!” said Mulder from beside her, and the two men clapped one another on the back. 

“So good to see you! Suzanne, you do remember Lord William Reynard Mulder, the Ninth Earl of Wexford?” the man said, turning from his friend and smiling. 

Mulder cut him a look while Suzanne dropped into a low curtsy. “Of course I do. Lord Wexford, it is so good to see you again.”

“One last bit of formality before we drop all pretense of it, I hope?” Mulder said, his eyebrows up. Sir Byers and Mulder both turned to Scully. 

“May I present my bride, Lady Dana, the Countess of Wexford,” he said, and Sir Byers bowed at her. 

“Enchanted, my lady,” he said, then paused for a moment before turning to the woman who had been standing next to him. 

“And may I present Miss Suzanne Modeski, my betrothed,” Sir Byers said, and the lady next to him once again lowered herself into a dignified curtsy. When she stood up straight, she smiled at Scully and threaded her hand through Scully’s arm, leading her up the steps and into a modest foyer. 

“I was thrilled when I learned Lord Wexford would be bringing a wife with him on holiday,” she said sweetly into Scully’s ear. “My betrothed is a wonderful man, but his associates are all men, and while I’ve been looking forward to hosting this sporting holiday, I daresay I was near to dreading the lack of female company.”

Scully smiled at her as the gentlemen came up behind them and closed the door on the bustle of servants outside unloading the carriages. 

“John’s housekeeper won’t forgive me for the impropriety, but I do hope you’ll let me personally see you to your chambers. They’re the best in the estate,” Miss Modeski said proudly.

Scully demurred and Miss Modeski led her, arm-in-arm, up a grand staircase toward the rear of the manse. Mulder and Sir Byers followed behind, murmuring to each other all the while. 

Miss Modeski stopped in front of a large oak door at the end of the hall and waited for Mulder and Sir Byers to draw even with them before she opened the door and swept into the room, letting the rest follow her. 

The room wasn’t overly large, but was beautifully appointed, with two large windows that looked out over the garden and hills spreading off into the distance in the back of the estate.

“What an absolutely stunning view,” Scully said, turning to smile sweetly at Sir Byers who had moved to Miss Modeski’s side and was standing quite proudly. 

“Capital,” Mulder said, “Just capital. It will be a fortnight to remember.”

Sir Byers and Suzanne turned and left them to give them some time to freshen up and rest from the journey. They found themselves alone in quiet peace for the first time in hours. Mulder stepped up to Scully and rubbed his hands up and down her arms, and then leaned in to give her a sweet kiss on the forehead. 

“Felicitations on the start of your honeymoon, Lady Wexford,” he said quietly. 

Scully smiled into his touch. 

“And yours, Lord Wexford.”

“Whatever will we do to fill the time?” he asked. 

“Oh,” Scully said, “we’ll think of something.”

  
XxXxXxXxXxX

Later, when they had come downstairs to join the rest of the party in the drawing room, Mulder was surprised and pleased to find that Sir Byers had invited his business associates to join the holiday as well. The men, both bachelors, he had met on several occasions before, and while he found them a bit odd, had liked them immensely. One of them, Mr. Frohike, was currently holding court with Scully, and seemed to be as smitten with his new wife as Mulder was himself. 

“It’s a small publishing firm,” Frohike said, staring at Scully intently. 

Mr. Langly, the third of the triumvirate, was leaning against the fireplace mantle, looking bored. 

“Oh, how interesting,” Scully said politely. Mulder wondered how long she’d give the little man, who wore a garish pinstriped suit with a bold blue ascot.

“Indeed,” Frohike went on.

"And what do you publish?" Scully asked him. 

At this Frohike exchanged a look with his other two associates -- a look that Suzanne caught -- she let out a peal of laughter. "What  _ don't _ they publish?!" she laughed. At this, she leaned into Byers side and hugged him affectionately. He smiled back at her. 

"Investigative journalism," Langly said from the mantle. 

"Now there's a term that'll never catch on," muttered a gentleman who was taking a turn about the room with his female companion. 

Mulder sought out his wife's gaze and found himself falling into their blue depths.  _ Poor Mr. Frohike _ , Mulder thought,  _ he never stood a chance _ . 

“I find it refreshing hearing many different viewpoints,” Mulder said, if only to be a contrarian to the turning gentleman.

“Hear, hear,” from Suzanne. 

“I am not used to hearing such things from a peer of the realm, Lord Wexford,” said Langly.

“Perhaps the love of a good woman has changed me.”

Scully watched him, intent. 

“Were you so heartless before marriage, Lord Wexford?” asked Suzanne.

“Nay, but I am heartless, now,” he said. “You see, my heart walks outside my body, just there,” he gestured to Scully. “It flits about with ginger hair and Cupid's Bow lips and it spouts scientific facts as though it were an encyclopædia.”

One of the women flapped out her fan and began using it. 

Scully caught his eye and her tongue darted out to wet her aforementioned lips.

“It must be inconvenient, going about your day with your heart engaged in other ventures,” said another seated gentleman — a Mr. Green, if Mulder’s memory served. 

“Ah,” said Mulder, “but you see, it always returns to me at night.”

Mulder smiled at the shocked intake of breath from Mr. Green’s wife, and walked to the sideboard to pour himself a brandy. He could feel Scully’s eyes on him all the while.

XxX

A few days pass ed, filled with hunts and picnics and lazy strolls around the ornamental lake, Mulder and Scully frequently breaking off to murmur sweet nothings out of earshot of the rest of the party. There was breakfast in the library, rumours of a minor spat between the blended retinue below stairs, and a handsy rendezvous between the new Lord and Lady Wexford in the mock gothic folly at the far end of the grounds. The bed was spacious and soft, and the honeymooning couple made excellent and copious use of their time together. Scully sent postcards home complimenting the food and the company, and Mulder was delighted for his friends to get to know his new bride. The game was plentiful and the weather was fine. It was an enchanting time.

Mulder should have known… that was usually the part of the fairytale when the hero had to earn his happy ending.


	5. Chapter 5

“What do you think the men do?” Suzanne asked, “when they retire to drink their port?”

After dinner, as the men of the aristocracy always did, the gentlemen of the party withdrew to a back room while the ladies meandered to the drawing room before retiring for the night.

“Cards and flatulence if I know my husband,” said Mrs. Green, one of the few other women who had been invited to the estate. 

Scully gave an involuntary snigger of embarrassed laughter. 

“Knowing John, it’s billiards,” Suzanne said, lowering herself onto a divan. “Always billiards.”

“I should like to join them,” Scully said.

“For cards and flatulence?” Mrs. Green said, “Leave me out of it.”

Suzanne chuckled. “If you mean the playing of billiards,” she said, “I should like to play as well. Perhaps one night we should eschew our social graces and storm the room.”

Scully stood. “What is stopping us from going now?” she asked.

“Other than Mr. Green’s gas?” Suzanne said, standing once again. “Nothing at all! I’m game.”

The other two women of the party declined, looking askance at Scully and Suzanne for their impropriety, but Scully, emboldened by Suzanne’s refreshing cheek, found she didn’t care. She knew Mulder would be happy to see her, and Byers had been nothing but kind and welcoming. With Suzanne by her side, they made their way toward their paramours. 

When they got to the billiard room, they found several of the gentlemen (Mr. Green included) sitting around a card table, pipe smoke thick in the air (perhaps to cover for the flatulence, thought Scully).

“We’ve come to interrupt your port!” Suzanne announced as they entered, and all the eyes in the room turned to them. 

“I can think of nothing I’d like more,” Sir Byers said with a smile. 

Some of the other gentlemen looked unhappy, but not one of them said anything after their host had greeted the women so kindly. Suzanne moved to Byers’ side and gave him a peck on the cheek. 

Scully scanned the room and found Mulder in the corner, looking at her with undisguised lust. His hair had a roguish part to it, which lent him an air of rakish charm — coupled with the sometime intensity of his gaze, it was no wonder the man had come into possession of an unearned reputation. She and her husband had made full use of their time together in Kent, but Mulder’s appetite for her bordered on insatiable. She met his eyes across the room and felt a flare below her waist -- she was growing wet for him from just a look. 

Suddenly, she felt a warm hand on her arm. She turned to find Frohike beside her, his eyes light. He was holding out a glass of port towards her. 

“Have you ladies come for the port or the cards?” he asked. 

“Neither,” Scully said, graciously taking the proffered glass, “we have come for the company.”

“And the billiards!” Suzanne said, and Frohike nodded to Langly, who was standing by the billiards table, holding a cue. The three billiard balls sat on the table. 

“May I have the first game?” Frohike asked. 

She was about to answer in the affirmative when she felt the kinetic mass of Mulder come up behind her, could feel his breath in her hair and the solid warmth of him along her back. 

“The first game my wife plays will be with me,” he rumbled, and Scully felt the peaks of her breasts turn to sharp points. “If it pleases her?”

She turned toward him, her face only inches from his. 

“You always please me, my lord,” she said quietly enough that only Mulder and Frohike heard her. Frohike let out a long, low whistle. 

Mulder stepped away from her and over to Langly, who handed over the cue without a word. 

“We gentlemen usually play for a wager,” Mulder said to her, a challenge in his eyes. 

“Name it,” she said, “though mind yourself, Lord Wexford,” she went on, “as I intend to win.”

Mulder’s mouth curled into a sly smile. 

“Do you?” Came the comment from one of the gentlemen standing by the hearth, swirling a port glass. “I have not met a woman yet who can best a man at billiards.”

Scully chose to ignore his bigotry and answered him frankly.

“Billiards are a matter of geometry,” she said, “Physics, too. I excel at both.”

“She’s not a bad ball handler, either,” Mulder muttered, moving to the other side of the table.

She chose to ignore his comment, and kept her eyes on the gentleman at the hearth, who inclined his head in apology.

In fact, she did win. First against Mulder and then against Frohike, Byers and finally against Mr. Abernathy, the hearth dwelling gentleman, against whom she could not resist having a go. He had the decency to be a somewhat gracious loser, but Scully could tell his hide was chapped, about which she felt no small amount of satisfaction. 

After the last game, she handed Langly her cue and addressed the room. “You gentlemen may pay me at the end of the week,” she said, “for I suspect your debts to me will only grow.” 

Her statement was met with hearty chuckles from the men and an outright whoop from Suzanne. Scully excused herself to retire for the evening. Mulder did the same, looking at her with impressed surprise when they exited the room and began the long walk back to their chambers. 

“Where did you learn to play billiards?” he finally asked once they were completely out of earshot of the room. 

She stopped in the hallway and turned to look at him frankly. 

“I have brothers, William,” she said. 

He threw his head back, laughed and offered her his arm, which she took as they once again proceeded to meander back to their chambers. 

“Take care calling me by my Christian name, Dana,” he said, his voice low, “I may grow to like it.”

The rare sound of her first name from his lips elicited a shiver through her that began at her ears and coursed right through to her sex. 

“I missed you,” she whispered, her gaze pointed below his waistline, “today.”

That was all it took for him to twist her around, and he had her pinned to the wall of the hallway before she could even blink. His mouth was on her neck in the same breath, and she felt the solid heat of him pressing against her much smaller frame, his iron-hard erection pressed into her stomach. 

His tongue ran rough down her shoulder and into the heaving flesh of her bosom, both of them het up to the point of sexual frenzy. She wanted him, could not wait, and almost,  _ almost _ didn’t care if anyone came upon them here in the middle of the hallway. 

She reached out and grasped him through the fabric of his breeches, squeezing and pulling him as best she could. He groaned into her décolletage and pumped his hips into her hand, yanking the front of her dress down to expose her breasts to the air. 

“I will not make it,” he gasped on a breath, “to our chambers.”

Scully looked over his shoulder and noticed an inset window in the hall with long drapery nearly covering it -- they could disappear behind it, so long as they made love standing up. 

“There,” she said, breathless herself, “the window behind you.”

He all but yanked her after him and once they were past the drapes and inside its enclosure, Mulder turned her around and pressed her front into the window, the glass cold as ice against the inflamed skin of her breasts. Her nipples were so hard she was surprised they didn’t make  _ tink _ ing sounds when they encountered it.

She heard a rustling and then felt the cool night air on her backside. Mulder’s mouth closed hot around her earlobe and he whispered “Lift your right leg,” around it.

She did so and his hand grasped around her upper thigh, pulling it high and out and before she could draw breath, felt the silken steel of him sliding straight into her. They both groaned. 

The fingers of his other hand found the swollen nub at the crest of her drenched sex, rubbing roughly. He pumped into her, grinding her chest and face into the window and she gasped at the pleasure of it. 

In no time at all, she felt her release building, and then her crisis broke. She sobbed once, her senses overwhelmed as Mulder followed her, grasping the flesh of her thigh so tightly she knew she would bruise. She would treasure the marks, she knew. She had never felt anything so euphoric or carnal.

When their breathing began evening out, he relaxed his grip and leaned back, and she nearly fell back into him, so weak were her legs. She turned around to face him and he reached down and gently tucked her breasts back into her frock, smoothing the garment over her shoulders. Her eyes searched out his. 

When hazel met blue, the look he gave her was so unguarded, so filled with undisguised tenderness, it made tears spring to her eyes. For all his outwardly careless insouciance, she knew Mulder cared deeply about a great many things. She had no doubt, and hadn’t for some time, that she was at the top of the list.

She leaned up and kissed him sweetly on the lips and pulled him out into the hallway, toward their chamber and their bed, toward her loving embrace. 

XxXxXxXxXxX 

Mulder had joined the gentlemen for an afternoon of shooting, leaving Scully, Suzanne and the few scattered women to their own devices. Rather than spend this magnificent day sitting in the drawing room reading or taking turns about the room, Scully decided some fresh air would do her some good and chose to go for a ride. 

Suzanne had offered to accompany her, but Scully remembered her mentioning that she wasn’t much of a horsewoman earlier in the week, so she politely declined the company. It would be good to get out on her own, she thought, it would give her some time with herself, which she hadn’t had much of, being more than happy to spend every waking minute (and all of the sleeping ones) at Mulder’s side. 

Donning her newest riding habit -- a winsome teal frock that had been a part of her enormous order with the modiste -- she asked a maid to let the stables know she was on her way and to saddle Queen. 

At the bottom of the grand staircase that led from the foyer, she noticed their newest footman Alexander hovering nearby. He caught her eye. 

“Shall I follow you on your ride, my lady?” he asked. It was probably the thing to do, but the idea of getting out and being alone, truly alone, in the countryside after weeks and weeks in the populated madness of Town was more attractive than being prudent.

“No thank you, Alexander,” she said. “Or is it Alex?”

“Alex, if you would,” he said. He had a fine face -- a strong jaw and a thick head of beautiful, dark hair, if a slightly feminine nose. She felt a small regret that she hadn’t gotten to know him at all, seeing as he was one of the few members of their household staff that had traveled with them. 

“Is Sir Byers’ staff treating you well here?” she asked. 

“Very well, my lady,” he said, “it is a well run household.”

She smiled at this and turned to go. He hastened to open the door for her, and closed it efficiently behind her. 

The day was crisp and bright, the greens of the fields around the estate almost blinding. They’d had several days in a row of a low grey drizzle, and the men were practically chomping at the bit for a spot of hunting when the sun came with the dawn. She drew in a deep breath of the fresh country air, and couldn’t wait to feel the powerful energy of Queen thrumming under her. It was the perfect day for a ride. 

Just outside of the stables, she was met by a groom -- not Peter or Terrence, she noted -- who was holding a mount, a bay gelding by the look of it, outfitted in her saddle and tack, that was not her horse Queen. The groom was older than herself, and a little twitchy -- the man had trouble meeting her eye. 

“I thank you,” she said politely, “but I requested that my own mount be readied for me, Mr….?”

“Barry, my lady,” he said. “My apologies, but Queeny had a swollen fetlock this morn. I think she mighta kicked her stall last night.”

“Is it serious?” Scully asked in concern.

“No ma’am,” he replied, “I mean my lady. I have a poultice wrapped around it now. Should be fine by midday tomorrow. B-b-but Easterly here should do well for you. He’s strong and should like a good ride.”

As if to prove the man’s point, Easterly pawed his hoof at the ground and nodded once, pulling at the reins.

“Spirited,” Scully said generously.

The groom’s eyes twitched and he looked to the side. 

“A bit,” he said.

Scully appraised the gelding, who looked back at her as if daring her to turn him away. She smiled at him. She liked an animal with a little mettle. 

“Very well,” she said, and the groom brought over a mounting block to help her bestride. The moment she sat down, Easterly took two shying paces sideways, and she took a firm hand with the reins. So this was a beast who needed to know who was in charge. Very well. She could and would teach him. 

He pranced a bit until he passed under the lintel that led that to the field behind the estate, but once through it, she gave the horse his head and he took off like a shot, blazing across the meadow like a beast possessed.

It was a glorious day. Ashford Park was large — fields and pastures out to the horizon. The village nearby was over a far rise, and she could just make out the tower of its church. 

Easterly seemed tireless, and she rode and rode until the beast’s flanks were heaving and she could smell his sweet sweat. She rode him to a large tree that bordered a small stream, dismounting to let him drink. Once his thirst seemed slaked, she secured him to the tree and left him to graze. From the small satchel secured to his side, she pulled a hunk of bread and cheese Prudence had wrapped in a light handkerchief and a new book she’d been dying to read — Jane Marcet’s book  _ Conversations on Chemistry _ .

She settled down in the shade of the tree and read, the peace and grace of the day and her new life settling over her gently like the satin sheets on their bed at home. She had not felt so content since she was a child, when the troubles of her father’s estate were still years in the future. Eventually she dropped off to sleep — she had been exhausted lately, but had not, after all, been getting quite as much rest as she ought.

She was awoken by the restless whinnying of Easterly, who seemed to have had his fill of grass and was eager to get back to the stables.

Putting what was left of her lunch back into the leather satchel, she remounted the horse without much trouble and the second she fingered the reins, he was off like a shot. She let him run until she came upon a small dirt avenue between two fields. 

As they made their way down it, she slowed Easterly to a walk, and he pulled several times at the reins, shying sideways as they made their way beside a high rock wall. 

“Pestilential beast,” Scully muttered, missing the smooth gait and easy manner of Queen. The next time she was to ride a horse that was not her own, she would be picking the mount herself. 

There was a stile in the wall about 10 yards away, and Scully got a prickly feeling as they approached it. Easterly grunted, pulling his head up once, twice. Just as they were even with the stile, a man jumped out onto their path and Easterly whinnied and spooked. He reared suddenly and Scully gave a sharp shout and was flung, unable to keep her seat in the awkward sidesaddle. 

She fell straight backwards as the horse took off at a gallop, landing hard, her head cracking back against the firmly packed earth. She saw stars ascending in her vision, up, up. 

A set of boots walked toward her and kneeled only a few feet away. Scully could just recognize the worn, unconcerned face of the groom who had given her Easterly. Her tongue felt thick in her mouth, and she struggled for a moment to speak.

“Please don’t hurt me,” she whispered, the black of unconsciousness closing in around her vision. 

“Do not worry, my lady,” he said, his voice fading as she lost consciousness, “Duane Barry’s not like these other guys.”


	6. Chapter 6

The men had returned from their day of shooting in high spirits. The game had been plentiful and there would be quail for their evening supper. 

Mulder entered their chamber to find it empty -- no real surprise, as Scully had taken to visiting with the few other women of the party in the drawing room the last few days during the rain. He would likely find her there. 

His clothes smelled of the outdoors, the woodsy tang clinging to his wool coat and breeches. He felt a peace and a happiness that he had not felt in nearly two years -- not since finding the ‘X’ marked envelope amongst his father’s possessions in the bottom of his desk drawer. 

The former Earl of Wexford had been a stalwart man, but also gruff and often taciturn, saying very little to his son in the form of praise or affection. Mulder sometimes felt as though he didn’t know him at all, and never more so than when he’d found that note. 

But something in Scully brought out the joy in him, completed him in a way he had not previously thought possible. Sometimes he felt as though Scully were truly the other half of him -- that they were perhaps put on the earth for the sole purpose of finding each other.

Perhaps the poets had the right of it after all -- love had a way of making everything seem rosier than it otherwise would, for even a bucolic smell clinging to his clothes brought him a sense of peace and rightness that it never would have before he met his wife. 

Thinking of her, he shucked a majority of his clothes and rang for a bath, thinking he’d like to be clean and dressed smartly for dinner when she next saw him. For all the scents of clover and pine, he was also getting whiffs of himself and while he thought that his wife appreciated a manly man in the full bloom of his manhood, he rather thought she was more likely to engage in sexual congress with him if he embraced the modernity of regular bathing. 

Later, as he reclined in the copper tub, his thoughts once again drifted to the mysterious ‘X’ note and its disturbing contents. He’d brought it with him on impulse, thinking that perhaps Byers and his business associates might be of some use in its interpretation. While they were mainly publishers, they had dabbled in the odd investigation, and Mulder trusted their discretion above any other.

Once the water had cooled almost completely, Mulder rang for Mr. Valedeo, his valet, and they began the somewhat arduous task of getting him dressed for dinner. When Valadeo was putting the finishing touches on his cravat, Mulder looked about the room -- it had gone dark outside and he had yet to see Scully. She usually came up to dress for dinner about the same time he did. 

“Danny, has Lady Wexford dressed for dinner already?”

“Not as far as I know, my lord,” Danny said, giving his work a critical eye and then reaching out for a brush to smooth out Mulder’s coat. “Prudence was still below stairs waiting for her when you rang for me.” One last swipe and pull on his coat, and Mulder was out the door. 

Mulder made his way toward the drawing room with purpose, only to find it empty, save for a maid tidying the space. 

“Miss?” Mulder said to her, and she half startled at being addressed, and then curtsied. “Do you know if Lady Wexford had been with the other ladies here this afternoon?”

The maid curtsied again, and spoke shyly. 

“The Countess was not present when I delivered the tea this afternoon, my lord, but I’m afraid that’s all I know.”

Mulder nodded at her, and turned from the room, glancing at the mantle clock before he left. It was nearly time for supper and if Scully wasn’t dressed for the meal, she would need to be quickly. As the highest ranking members of the party, they would not start eating without her present, and he knew that Scully would feel terrible for not just the hungry guests, but also the kitchen staff, who would have the meal ready at a certain time and would have to put themselves out to keep it warm and edible. 

Finally he decided to just grab the bull by the horns and ring for Prudence. If anyone knew where her mistress was, it would be her. 

When Prudence arrived in the foyer, where Mulder was waiting, she looked flush and out of breath. 

“My apologies for keeping you waiting, my lord,” she said, panting, “I have just come in from the stables.”

“The stables?” Mulder asked. 

“Yes, my lord,” she said, “Lady Wexford went riding this afternoon, and she must have been delayed. I was hoping to find her there so that I might get her dressed for dinner. It is nearly mealtime! Alexander, the new footman, mentioned that he thought he saw her return, and I thought perhaps she was spending a bit of time with Queen. She does love her wedding gift so. But the grooms there said they hadn’t seen her. They were most unhelpful.” 

A low feeling of worry blossomed in Mulder’s chest. 

“Alexander saw her return?” Mulder asked. 

“That’s what he said,” Prudence said. 

“Come with me, Prudence,” Mulder said, turning smartly on his heel. “We’ll go back to the stables. Perhaps I can inspire the grooms to be a bit more helpful.”

When Mulder strode into the stable, he found the head groom coming down from the hay loft looking angry. He looked to Mulder in surprise. 

“My lord!” he said, “Can I help you?”

“We are looking for my wife,” Mulder said simply, gesturing to Prudence. 

“As I told the young lady not ten minutes ago, the Countess is not here, nor has she been, as far as I know. Queen has not left the stable since she returned from the pasture yesterday.”

Without waiting for another word, Mulder made his way to Queen’s stall to find her calmly chewing hay while Peter, their own groom, brushed her. 

“My lord,” Peter said kindly, nodding at him. 

“The head groom tells me that Queen has not left the stables all day.”

“As far as I know that’s true, my lord,” Peter said. “Terrance accompanied you and Hercule to your shooting today, and I spent a fair amount of time working on the axle of your baggage carriage. But so long as I have been here, Queen has not left. I thought I would give her a nice rub down.” He gestured to Queen’s flank. 

“But Lady Wexford went riding today,” Prudence said. 

Peter stood up straight. “She did?” he said, a hint of alarm creeping into his voice, “but Queen has not been ridden.”

Mulder turned to the head groom who had come up behind them. “Could my wife have ridden a different horse?” Mulder asked him. 

The man’s brows creased, and he nodded. “One moment, my lord,” he said, and went into the tack room. When he returned, his face was pale. 

“The Countess’s saddle and tack is hanging where it should be, but it is wet -- covered in horse sweat -- it has been used today.”

“Which horse did she ride?” Mulder asked. 

“I would have to ask Duane, one of our grooms. I came to the stall of Easterly not an hour ago to find the horse had been put away wet. When you entered the stables I had been looking for Duane in the hay loft thinking he had gone up there to take a nap without rubbing down Easterly first. I had every intention of giving him an earful.”

“Could Lady Wexford have ridden Easterly, then?”

“That is my fear, my lord. If my grooms valued their life, they would never have saddled that beast for the Countess,” the head groom said, “straight from the devil that gelding is -- too much spirit and not enough sense.”

Mulder felt the cold edge of dread. If Scully had gone riding and been thrown from the horse, she could be out there now, hurt, or worse. The horse had returned to its stable, as horses always would. But someone had removed Scully’s tack and stalled the beast and no alarms had been raised. They needed to find Duane, the missing groom. They needed to find Scully.

XxX

Byers had sent the worried houseguests to dine without him and Mulder, and had called for an assembly of every servant not currently in the dining room serving dinner. They amassed in the foyer of the manse, lined up all in a row, looking worried. Mr. Headly, Byers’ butler, stood at the head of them, his eyes sharp. 

The groom, Duane Barry, was still nowhere to be found, though there had been a thorough search of both the stables and the main house. Scully had still not returned.

Mulder and Byers were in the process of interviewing every servant who may or may not have seen either Barry or Scully. The maid sent to the stables to request that Scully’s horse be saddled had told them tearfully that she had spoken only to the groom Barry about the Countess’s request. 

“You said you saw Lady Wexford return, Alexander?” Mulder asked the young footman. 

“I thought I had, my lord,” Alexander said, “though it was from a distance. I had offered to accompany the Countess earlier in the day, though she declined. I saw her riding out past the estate not ten minutes later. I saw the same horse return not long ago when I was standing at the servant’s entrance, and it had a rider.”

Mulder nodded. “But you cannot be sure the rider was the Countess?” he asked. 

“I suppose not, sir,” Alexander said, hanging his head. 

“Any word of your missing groom?” Mulder asked Byers. 

Sir Byers turned to look at his butler, who gave him a curt shake of the head. 

“I’m afraid not, Mulder,” Byers said sympathetically. “We’ll put together a search party at once. For both Mr. Barry and for the Countess.” At that he nodded at his butler, who snapped his fingers and all the assembled servants instantly scattered to find torches and assemble small groups. 

Mulder grabbed Alexander as he was leaving. 

“Which way did the Countess go when she was riding out?” Mulder asked him. 

“To the West, my lord,” Alexander said, giving Mulder a stiff nod and scrambling off after the other footmen. 

After a moment, Mulder found himself alone, worry roiling in his gut, and his heart in utter turmoil. He would go west as well.

XxXxXxXxXxX

Scully came to consciousness slowly, her head pounding. When she raised her hand up to feel for the source of the pain, she found her hands had been bound together, her riding gloves absent. Her mouth felt as though it were filled with cotton and she struggled to amass enough saliva to swallow. She was having trouble focusing her vision.

She was laying on what felt like the ground, on a thin, scratchy wool blanket, and could feel a cool breeze and hear the rustling of leaves from above her. Finally, as more of her faculties returned to her, she raised her bound hands to her face to find that she was wearing a blindfold that was half off one of her eyes. She pulled it down and looked about her. 

Darkness had descended, but there was a small campfire several feet away, the flames licking up into the black night, the firewood snapping and crackling. She sat up slowly, realizing that there was a rope tied about her waist - the knot impossibly tight - which was secured to a nearby tree, the cord looped and knotted over a branch she’d never be able to reach. 

Moving had been a mistake. Her vision swam and she felt as though she might vomit. She took several deep breaths, willing the contents of her stomach to remain where they were. After a few moments, her stomach settled and her head cleared enough to take stock of her situation. 

Her hands, tied in front of her, were bound tightly -- she could not pull her wrists out of them, though they were not so tight that she had lost feeling. She was being held in a wooded area or forest, and the groom who had spooked her horse -- and, she assumed, brought her here -- was nowhere to be seen.

The wind was picking up and blowing through her meager clothing. Her body gave an involuntary shiver and she tried scooting herself closer to the small fire. As she sat absorbing whatever heat she could, her head cleared and she started coming back to herself, peering around the woods surrounding her, trying to get a sense of where she was. 

From far, far off in the distance, she thought she heard her name being called. She took a deep breath, preparing to give an almighty shout, when, from seemingly nowhere, suddenly standing in firelight was the groom, Duane Barry, his eyes staring intently at her. She gasped and he lunged forward, wrapping a gag around her mouth and tying it tightly around her head, pieces of her hair getting caught up in the knot. He doused the fire quickly, plunging the area into darkness and then was gone. 

Heart pounding in her chest, she scrambled backwards toward the tree and blanket and fell upon it, waiting for the man to come back. 

He never came. After several tense minutes, she willed herself to calm down and leaned back against the tree, grabbing the edge of the blanket upon which she sat with her bound hands and trying to pull it over herself for warmth. She heard the distant calls getting further and further away and then the forest took on an eerie, unnatural silence. 

_ Mulder _ , she thought, pulling experimentally at her bindings,  _ where are you? _


	7. Chapter 7

“Scullaaaaaay“!” Mulder called desperately into the night.

He was still in his dinner attire, now torn in two places and wracked with burrs. He struggled through the brush at the far end of the field on the west end of Byers’ estate, a footman on either side of him, both carrying torches, each also calling out for the Countess of Wexford, their voices cracking from hours of use.

It was nearing dawn, the light in the east greying, promising another stunning day. Fog hugged the ground, a damp cold that permeated the bones. His own footman, Alexander, walked to a nearby ditch and looked down and shook his head when Mulder caught his eye. The other footman, Andrew, who worked for Byers, was dead on his feet, torch shaking in his weary hand. They had been out searching all night. 

The thud of approaching hoofbeats caught their attention and they turned to find Byers approaching on horseback, his face wan in the ever-increasing light of pre-dawn. 

Mulder looked to him expectantly. 

“Nothing,” Byers said to him, before he could even ask. “I’m sending the search parties back to the estate to rest-” Mulder was about to protest when Byers held up a hand and went on. “I’m riding to the village to recruit fresh men and inform the constable. We’ll keep looking, Mulder.”

Mulder turned to the two footmen and dismissed them, and they turned and began the long trudge back toward the estate. 

“You need to rest as well, Mulder,” Byers said gently. 

Mulder shook his head at his friend, his heart weary and his hands jittery and shaking. 

“I’ll rest when we find her,” he said. 

XxXxXxXxXxX

Scully startled awake when a crow cawed raucously from a branch above her, the bright sunlight of the spring day shining through a break in the leaves and half-blinding her. The pain in her skull had dulled, but still throbbed lowly with every beat of her heart. 

Leaves rustled not far from where she lay, and she cracked her eyes to look.

The tall black boot of a gentleman was the first thing she saw when her eyes began adjusting to the light -- polished, but with several smears of dirt creeping up from the sole. She drew in a surprised breath. She had one, quick, vague hope that the boot would belong to Mulder, but when she turned her head up to look at the gentleman’s face, her hope turned to despair. It was not her husband, come to save her.

CBG Spender looked down at her without expression, casually removing his gloves. He then reached down and roughly untied her gag. 

“ _ You _ ,” she said, the second the rag came loose. The harsh smell of tobacco smoke hit her nose as she sat up. 

“Lady Wexford,” the man said, his voice flat.

“Release me at once, Mr. Spender,” she said, holding up her hands in front of her. 

“I don’t think that I will, Lady Dana,” he said, and the sound of her name on his lips sent a shiver of revulsion down her spine.

“What do you want with me?” she asked. 

He looked about himself at the forest and the grungy blanket upon which she had slept with distaste. “The family of Wexford owes me,” he said, then looked down nonchalantly at his manicured nails.

“What for?” she asked. 

“An old debt,” he said, then leveled a look at her as though he had assessed her intelligence and found her up to snuff. “The sins of the father.”

“ We are born with our father's names. We are not responsible for their failures,” she said, thinking of the Marquess. 

“Nevertheless,” he said, tugging his buckskin gloves back on, “I will collect what’s owed me. Your bridegroom has so far refused to pay.”

“So this is a kidnapping, then?”

Spender moved around the tree she was tied to, reaching up to undo the knot behind it and holding onto the rope that was still around her waist as if she were a dog he was taking for a walk. 

“I gave him several chances to settle the debt,” he said.

“Several chances? You mean threats and the offer of your own daughter as a bride? A woman he does not love?”

Spender shrugged and kneeled down, bringing his eyes level with hers. She leaned back against the tree, trying to keep as much distance between them as she was able. 

“And did he love you when he ruined you in the garden of Halford House?” he asked, and she felt her cheeks go red -- how did he know? “How you managed to snare the ninth Earl of Wexford, wedding him within a day of meeting him is the talk of the _ ton _ .”

She could find no rebuttal.

“You are of good breeding, but unimpressive resources. A fortune hunter,” he went on. 

“Were I pot, I’d call you kettle,” she hissed. He narrowed his eyes at her and stood. He had the look of a snake.

“So he wedded and bedded you,” Spender said, “or was it the other way around?” She looked away, unable to stand to look at him any longer. “Get up,” he ordered, tugging on the rope. She refused to move.

“I will have what’s owed to me,” he said, then grabbed her by the arm and yanked her to standing, “one way or another.”

She swayed momentarily on her feet and he reached up and fingered a lock of her hair that had come out of her chignon, rubbing it between his fingers and staring intently at her face. She felt as though she might retch. Without warning, his other arm came up, knife in hand and sliced it off with an ungentle tug.

XxX

Bound — the gag she’d been wearing hanging loosely around her neck — she was led through a fallow field and into a carriage that was waiting in the center of an empty lane, Duane Barry serving as coachman. Spender climbed in behind her and sat down on the bench opposite. He leaned over and pulled the drapes over the carriage windows, casting the interior into partial darkness. It was not nearly so fine as the Wexford coach and smelled, oddly, of gunpowder.

The conveyance lurched into movement, and he leaned back in the seat, his hands resting atop an ebony walking stick topped with an elaborate silver wolf’s head, the ruby eyes of the beast staring at Scully with a malicious glare. 

“You should be quite comfortable,” Mr. Spender practically sneered, “I assure you that you will be kept in the luxury to which you have so recently become accustomed.”

Scully glared at him but remained silent.

After about forty five minutes of travel, she’d been lulled into a depressed stupor, her shoulder and head leaning lightly against the side of the carriage. Spender had been dozing as well, and they both sat upright when the carriage was pulled to an abrupt stop. 

Instantly alert, Spender peeked out the window around the covering. 

“Not a word,” he said, tense. He had his hand wrapped around the walking stick, as if he meant to use it as a weapon. 

She could hear the muffled words of Barry and then the scattered-rocks sound of someone dismounting a horse and approaching the side of the carriage.

“And who are you carrying inside of the carriage?” the rider said, his voice sounding as though it were just outside of the door. 

More muffled words from Barry. 

“Just your employer?” the rider said, “No one else?”

One short word in response. 

At this, Spender pulled the gag hastily up back around her mouth and held his finger to his lips. He then threw open the door of the carriage and jumped out, slamming it quickly behind him with such force that it hit the frame and bounced back open by several inches. Scully leaned forward, trying to get a glimpse of the rider through the crack. 

“What is the meaning of this?” Spender demanded. 

“I am the constable of these parts, sir,” the rider replied calmly. “There is a noblewoman missing from a nearby estate and I am charged to find her. Have you seen anyone on your travels? She is a countess, of average height with ginger hair. Last seen wearing a blue riding habit.”

Scully looked down at her riding frock, torn and covered in dust and brambles from her forced march across the field. 

“I have seen no such woman,” Spender said shortly. 

“And you are traveling alone?”

“With the exception of my coachman, yes.”

“What is your name, sir?”

Spender paused, and Scully could hear the constable take a few steps over from where he’d been standing. She could see the edge of the man’s boot in the crack of the carriage door. Her heart was pounding. One step more and the man would be able to see her. 

“My name is Mr. Morley sir,” Spender said, his voice softening, becoming more amenable. “Lately of London, but I have purchased a small seaside estate near Dover.”

“And you are traveling there now?”

“I am, sir,” said Spender. 

The constable paused, and Scully shifted on her bench, which creaked under her. 

“What was that sound?” the constable asked, suddenly alert. 

“I heard nothing,” Spender said, the friendly tone in his voice gone. 

The constable then took one step and peered in through the cracked door of the carriage. Scully connected eyes with him, screaming as loudly as she could through the fabric of her gag. The man’s eyes went wide and he reached for the pistol tucked in to the top of his breeches. 

“What is the meaning of-” the constable shouted. A tumult of gravel from the road kicked in front of the door and he crumpled to the road, his head the only thing Scully could see through the sliver of the doorway, bleeding from a gash above his eye. The door was flung open widely and Spender stood in it, his chest heaving, the wolfshead-topped walking stick in his hand, dripping blood from the tip. He jumped into the carriage. 

“Drive, coachman!” he shouted, “Drive!” 

Scully heard the sharp snap of a whip and the coach lurched into movement, Spender shooting daggers at her from his eyes.

XxXxXxXxXxX

Mulder felt like he was floating above his own body, dead on his feet but at the same time still pulsing with restless energy. Scully had been missing for 48 hours, and he had not slept a wink in all that time. He fought against the pull of sleep and the dark push of pessimism whispering gradually louder in his ear:  _ she is gone, she is dead, she has left you _ . 

He had not changed his clothes, nor bathed. He paced the length of the hallway in the manse, alternating between the front door and Byers’ office, where various staff members would check in on occasion, none with any new information. The groom, Duane Barry, had all but disappeared, most of his things still in the room he occupied with one of the other lower members of the household staff. 

Mulder had been out to the four corners of the estate and beyond, usually accompanied by his own footman, and they had found nothing. It was as if Scully had ascended to the stars, leaving no trace of her corporeal body on the earth. News had come in just that morning that the local constable had been attacked and killed on a roadside on the far reaches of the county. Curious as to whether or not it was connected to his missing wife, Mulder was just making another turn in the hallway when the butler approached the door to Byers’ office and gave Mulder a steady look before entering. 

“The post has arrived, sir,” Mr. Headly said, and Mulder hovered near the door while he delivered the post to his employer. The butler exited, leaving the door open, and Mulder watched Byers closely as he shuffled through it, stopping halfway through and sitting up straight. 

“Mulder,” Byers said sharply, not looking away from the papers in front of him, knowing that Mulder was hovering there. 

Mulder entered the room immediately, and Byers finally looked up. 

“It is addressed to you,” Byers said. Mulder had received correspondence since they’d arrived in Kent, but most had been from his land stewards, and this was no piece of business -- with the letter was a small lock of red hair.

Byers handed it over and before Mulder could even tear into it, Byers had stood and pulled the bell for a servant, whispering something to a footman who arrived at the office door a moment later.

“ _ Dear Lord Wexford _ ,” the letter formally began, “ _ I hope this letter finds you well and in a generous disposition. I am writing to inform you that your wife, Lady Dana, the Countess of Wexford, is well and unharmed and currently under my protection. I have enclosed evidence, etc. She will be returned to you, provided you pay a ransom in the amount 20,000 pounds. I shall give you a week to put together the money. You will be contacted by an intermediary with further instructions on where to pay it, and how to collect your property/wife etc. Failure to pay or comply with forthcoming instructions will result in bodily harm to your wife that I’m sure you would both wish to avoid. _ ”

The letter was not signed with a signature, but with a large scrawling X, no doubt so that it could not be used as evidence against the blackmailer. He looked at the non-signature. _ It couldn’t be... _ He reread the letter a second time, his stomach falling to his toes when he got to “ _ Failure to pay or comply with forthcoming instructions will result in bodily harm to your wife _ …” As he lowered the letter to his lap, there was a soft knock on the office door and Frohike and Langly walked into the room and conferred quietly with Byers. 

“Mulder,” Byers said gently, “Do you mind if we consult with my colleagues? I believe we can be of some assistance to you.” Mulder nodded dumbly, not taking his eyes off the paper in front of him. He lifted the lock of hair to his nose and could swear he could still smell the lavender of her soap. “Can you tell us about the correspondence you received?” Byers went on. 

In answer, Mulder simply held out the letter, and Byers gently took it from him and read it with Frohike and Langly peering over his shoulder. 

“So it’s a kidnapping then,” Langly said, “a ransom demand.”

“It would appear so,” Mulder said without feeling. 

“It would have to have been posted locally,” Frohike said, examining the letter and the envelope it came in, “she has been gone not quite two days. This could not have come far.”

Langly peered at the paper. 

“Medium stock, decent quality,” he said, “And the language suggests an education. This has been sent from the office of a gentleman or someone of middling to excessive means.”

Mulder looked up, impressed. 

“Do you have any enemies, Lord Wexford?” Frohike asked. 

“Please call me Mulder,” Mulder said absently, thinking of tobacco smoke and the not-quite veiled threats in his office weeks and weeks ago now. 

“Mulder,” Frohike nodded at him, “Do you have any enemies?”

“Please wait here,” he said, moving quickly toward the door of the office. 

“Mulder?” Byers questioned Mulder's retreating back. 

Mulder made his way to his chambers and then rushed back down to Byers’ office and handed the men, still huddled together, the envelope with the large ‘X’ scrawled across the front. 

Without a word, Byers opened it and the three men leaned in and began reading. It only took a moment for them to finish and six eyes swung up to meet Mulder’s. 

“But this is dated nearly two decades ago,” Byers said, astonished. “Is it-”

Mulder interrupted him. “It was not sent to me, but to my father,” he said. 

The three men before him shared a troubled look. 

  
  



	8. Chapter 8

When finally her hands were unbound, Scully immediately reached up and removed the blindfold that had been pulled crudely over her head by Spender following the incident with the constable. The door to the room she found herself in closed hurriedly behind the person who had untied her, and she threw herself at it, finding the door solidly locked. 

The room was small but well-appointed, with a decently sized bed against one wall, a dresser, wardrobe, and a small stand with a wash basin and screen on the far corner behind which she found an empty chamber pot, which she kicked over in frustration.

She was tired of being frightened, and sick of being intimidated by her situation. She was a smart young woman, and a decently educated one at that. If her station didn’t help her, as it had most of her life, she would help herself. 

Through the window of the room, she could see the sea -- shining and vast. She was on the second floor of the building, and when she leaned out of it, could see several other windows to her left and right. It seemed she was in the middle of a non-middling-sized home, which was surrounded by a tall wrought-iron fence. And not far beyond that, the sea. There was nothing that she could use to climb down from the window, which was disappointing. And the drop, such as it was, was a fairly long one, with sharp-looking gravel edging the house. Should she survive the fall without injuring herself (unlikely), she would have to deal with the fence. 

She closed the window, sat on the bed, and waited. She would get back to Mulder. But how?

XxXxXxXxXxX

“So according to this,” Frohike held up the aged envelope with the large X, “you have an illegitimate sister.”

“Half-sister, yes,” said the Earl, “and I have been looking for her since I found that letter two years ago in my father’s personal effects after his death.”

“And the ‘X’ on the envelope,” Frohike went on, “bears a striking resemblance to that of this ransom note.”

“Indeed,” Mulder said, looking at each man in turn. “CGB Spender,” he said with finality.

Byers cocked his head in question. 

“You asked if I had any enemies. Up until several months ago, I would have said no.”

Mulder went on to tell them of Spender’s insistence that Mulder’s father had owed a debt to Spender and his efforts to collect, though Mulder had never been able to find any evidence of it, and wrote it off as the game of an unscrupulous fortune hunter. He told them of Spender’s offer of marriage to his daughter, and how the man had become incensed when he learned of Mulder’s marriage to Scully; how he’d practically threatened her in Mulder’s own study. 

“The ransom note, that letter -- they had to have both come from Spender. The debt he insisted my father owed him -- it must be related to this girl, this Samantha. My sister.”

“And you never made the connection before?” Langly asked. 

“I had no reason to,” Mulder explained, “I had found that letter years before I’d ever heard from Mr. Spender, and the letter itself doesn’t demand any recompense. It is merely an accusation.”

The letter was an accusation, nothing more. A veiled threat. 

“So why wouldn’t he have mentioned it? Her? Your sister. When he came to collect the debt.”

“The scandal of an illegitimate child would have affected my father far more than it would affect me. By playing it close to his vest, perhaps Spender thought he still had advantage over me -- perhaps thinking there were other skeletons in my closet he could exploit to get the money he’s after. And by God, he does have advantage over me,” Mulder finished a little desperately, raking his hand through his hair and gesturing at the ransom note.

Byers nodded solemnly. 

“What do you know of the man?” Frohike asked. 

“Not much,” Mulder lamented, “I have reached out to an old friend, a former Captain in His Majesty’s army. He works on Bow Street. I asked him to investigate the gentleman after he threatened my wife. I got a letter from him only yesterday. All he has found so far is that ‘CGB Spender’ is merely one of many aliases used by this… cancer of a man.”

“And have you managed to find evidence of this child, Samantha?” Langly asked, “Perhaps she could lead us to this ‘Spender.’”

“None,” Mulder said bleakly.

XxXxXxXxXxX

Scully awoke to the sound of a key in the lock. She had undressed before bed, pulling off her soiled riding habit and, having nothing else to do with it, laid it over the chair in the corner of the room. She still wore her shift, and pulled the covers of the bed tightly up to her neck as whoever was at the door fiddled with the knob before finally swinging it open. 

“My lady?” she heard the voice of the groom, Duane Barry, “Are you decent, my lady?”

Scully was obviously quite cross with the man. In her mind, he was every bit as responsible for her abduction as the tobacco smoking bastard who called himself Spender. 

“As decent as I can be in this situation,” she said crossly. 

Barry haltingly stuck his head into the doorway, his darting eyes assessing the room before reluctantly entering it, carrying a small tray before him atop which sat a plate of fried eggs and a rasher of bacon. Though she was determined to refuse whatever was offered her in an effort to convey her displeasure, her stomach growled of its own accord. 

“Will you take this in bed, my lady?” the man asked, his eyes darting everywhere in the room but where she sat. 

“You may put it on the table,” she said, rather harshly. 

He set it down and lingered, still very obviously averting his eyes from her person. Eventually he said:

“Is there anything else I can get you?” 

She heaved an irritated sigh. He seemed a simpleton, though she suspected he was not -- just a man dealt a difficult hand of cards in his life without the means or the compunction to do anything about it. 

“Clothing,” she said. 

“My lady?” 

She pulled the bed covers down enough to point to her soiled and torn riding frock on the chair in the corner of the room. 

“I require clothing, Mr. Barry. My frock was dirtied and torn during my kidnapping. I have nothing else to wear.” She gestured to herself in the bed. 

The man turned beet red and nodded quickly. “Yes, ma’am. I mean my lady. I will get you what I can, my lady,” seeming to be spurred on by a task he might accomplish, he hastened to leave the room. 

Scully took a deep, bracing breath, hearing her mother’s voice in her head:  _ there’s never any reason to treat the servants with anything other than genteel decorum, Dana. None of us choose our lot in life -- we are assigned it by God.  _ Not only did her mother have a point, but she was not in a situation where offending her captor would produce a good outcome. She needed a friend. You catch more flies with honey. She could and would save her enmity for Spender, the man who truly deserved it.

“And tea, Mr. Barry,” she said, regaining some of her composure. “I… I would quite like a cup of tea.”

He paused in the doorway and for the first time met her eyes with his own. 

“Yes, my lady,” he said with a halting smile, “I can do that, my lady.”

XxXxXxXxXxX

A note arrived at Ashford Park the next day with brief instructions telling the Earl that a further directive would be given in the village chapel the following day at 3:00 in the afternoon. 

Byers had cancelled the remainder of the holiday, and the guests -- somber and avoiding Mulder’s eye -- were departing, each withdrawal leaving the manse just a little more quiet and lonely. 

The business associates of Byers were the only ones left by the end of the day -- they had taken Scully’s abduction as a personal affront, and the three men vowed not to rest until they had restored the Countess to the Earl’s side. In fact, the three men planned to head into the village hours early the next day, with plans to keep watch on the village church, hoping to get an idea of where this ‘intermediary’ as Spender had put it, was coming from or going to. 

Mulder spent a restless night in a bed that still smelled like his wife, succumbing to exhaustion, though each moment of slumber was wracked with nightmares and dreams, each one more disturbing than the one before it. 

When at last he dragged himself out of bed at first light, he was met by Mr. Valadeo, who softened his often stern demeanor and inquired about how the Earl was doing. 

“Not well, Danny,” Mulder said morosely. 

“That is plain, my lord,” he said kindly, gesturing to the three days worth of stubble that rasped on Mulder’s chin when he absently stroked it. “Could you tolerate a shave?” Danny went on to ask, “you’ll want to look your finest when the Countess is returned.”

Mulder huffed a wan smile and nodded, letting his valet take over, who led him to the chair by the dressing table without a word. Scully’s things were still sitting on the top of it, her tortoiseshell hairbrush with errant strands of red sticking out amongst the bristles.

“There is much talk below stairs,” Danny said, after what seemed like hours of silence. “Everyone is quite concerned.” He rubbed shaving soap purposefully onto Mulder’s face, then sharpened his blade. The same thing he did nearly every day. 

“I’m concerned for the Countess myself,” Mulder said, trying not to think of what could be happening to Scully even now, “excessively.”

“Well, yes,” Danny went on, dipping the razor blade into water and then scraping the blade down Mulder’s cheek. “Of course we are all worried for Lady Dana. Poor Prudence is beside herself with worry. But,” he said, rinsing the blade in the small dish of water, “we are just as concerned for you, my lord.” His actions were careful and deliberate, which eased Mulder into a rare calm normalcy he hadn’t felt for days. 

“For me?" 

"You have not been married long," Danny went on, scraping the blade down his master's neck slowly, taking thoughtful care with his task, "and there was no courtship to speak of..."

Mulder would not normally countenance this kind of talk from his servants, but Danny was allowed more leeway than many. Mulder considered the man a friend. 

"But it is clear to everyone that there is love between you and the Countess. Deep-seated, unshakable love. Love is not afforded to many in this world. Particularly one as powerful as that which exists between the two of you. Rare or lucky are those who find it, sir. We are, all of us, praying for her swift and safe return. For both your sakes.”

Danny had not taken his eyes off the contours of Mulder’s face, continuing to gently and carefully groom him. Mulder felt tears form at the corners of his eyes, touched beyond measure. He cleared his throat. “Thank you, Danny.” 

Valadeo wiped the errant foam from Mulder’s face, his duty done, and straightened, sniffing in a very English way. 

“Sir,” he said. “I shall help you dress.”

XxXxXxXxXxX

Barry came back an hour later with several ill-fitting, dowdy frocks, but at least they were clean and well mended. He came back ten minutes after that -- once Scully was finally dressed and out of bed -- with a hot cup of tea. 

He looked in her eyes for only the second time. “Would… would you like milk or sugar?” he asked. 

“Sugar,” she said after a moment and gave him a small smile, which he hesitantly returned. 

He came back only moments later with several cubes of sugar on a small china plate. He handed it to her deferentially. 

Just as he was leaving (and had pulled out the key to lock the door), she called out to him. 

“Mr. Barry,” she said. He paused in the doorway and looked up. “Are there any staff in the house? Any maid I might pass along my garments to, to be laundered? Perhaps mended?”

He swallowed and looked to the ground. 

“They have been temporarily dismissed, my lady. At the moment, it is only you and I.” 

So Spender wasn’t on the property, then. He must be close by, though. A thought struck her. Perhaps there was a way to get out of this locked room. If only to see the lay of the land and get a better idea of her circumstances. 

“And do you… intend to launder my unmentionables?”

The man once again turned an impressive shade of red. 

“I only ask, as these clothes -- kind that you were to bring to me -- do not fit well. I would very much like the chance to launder and mend what I wear to… save you the embarrassment of having to do it for me.” She took a breath and took a chance. “I am due to begin my courses, you see,” she said, and the man turned almost white, “and that will require… specialized cleaning. I’m happy to mend the clothes in my room, but laundering is a messy business, as you know,” (she had never actually done it) “and if you would permit me, I’d prefer to do it… out of doors.”

“Uh,” he fumbled for a response, “uh…”

“No need to answer me now, Mr. Barry,” she said, “we still have a day or two. I thank you for the excellent breakfast. The eggs were delicious.”

With that she smiled at him kindly, and he closed the door behind him, though he was slow to turn the key. 


	9. Chapter 9

Mulder rode Hercule into the village alone, as stipulated by the menacing note. Byers, Frohike and Langly had taken Byers' carriage to the edge of town just after they all broke their fast that morning and were set up at strategic locations around the village church. They were watching and waiting. For whom, no one was quite sure. 

At the appointed hour, Mulder stabled his horse at the village blacksmith and walked to the church, opening the gate, according to his pocket watch, at precisely 3:00. He walked through the small graveyard and on to the door. Quiet seemed to expand all around him; no horses or carriages passed by in the street, no villagers seemed to walk by, nor call out greetings to each other. All he could hear was the sound of his breathing and the sound of his own heart. He stepped through the door under the tower.

He wasn’t sure what he had been expecting to find. Some swarthy-looking brigand or even Spender himself. Instead, the church was empty. 

“Hello?” he called out. His voice seemed to echo coldly against the stone walls. His call was met with silence. He made his way slowly through the nave, the box pews on either side of him empty. He approached the chancel, passing the steps to the empty pulpit, and stopped when he got to the rail before the altar. He turned slowly until he was facing the pews and again called out, “Hello?” 

It was then that he noticed a sheet of parchment sitting on the bench of the first pew. He hurried toward it and picked it up, flipped it over. It was blank. When he looked up, there was a gentlewoman standing just inside the south aisle. When he took a step toward her, she turned before he could see her face and rushed out the door of the south porch. He gave chase. 

She was wearing a light green frock with a matching bonnet, the sides of which flopped low over her face. She hurried through the gravestones and around the back of the building. When he rounded the corner, he nearly ran into her. She was standing, holding out a piece of parchment like the one still clutched in his hand. 

When he took it, she raised her head and he finally saw her face. 

“Miss Spender?” he asked, his voice croaking in surprise. “Are you-”

She raised her hand higher, holding the paper almost up to his face. 

“Take it,” she said, insistently, “you’ll need to give it to the proprietor of the coaching inn just south of town.” Mulder slowly took the paper from her, his face still frozen in surprise. “He will give you a trunk in which you will place the 20,000 pounds. Once the trunk is secured, he will give you further instructions. You have… you have one week exactly to comply, my lord.” 

She turned to go. Shaking himself, he grabbed her arm. She startled but turned. 

“Why are you doing this?” he asked.

She smiled sadly. “You have made your choice in this life, Lord Wexford,” she said, “and I have made mine.”

Anger flared in him and he gripped her arm a little tighter. 

“Why are you here?” he asked. “You could have just as easily given these instructions via the post. Why have you implicated yourself in an act so heinous as this?”

“I suppose I wanted to see you, one last time,” she said. “I wanted to say to you… I could have made you happy. We could have been happy together.”

“I  _ am _ happy,” Mulder said simply. 

“But I am not,” she replied in a voice devoid of feeling. 

His anger coiled into a snake of rage, fangs bared and ready to strike. He squeezed her arm harder -- hard enough to leave a mark -- and she winced. 

“We are going to the constable, you and I. Right now,” he said, his voice low and angry. He turned to leave and pull her along but she resisted. 

“If I am not back to my father by an appointed hour, he will hurt Lady Wexford. I swear it.”

Mulder released her and took a step back, gasping. The hand that gripped the paper she had given him was curled around it like a vice, the paper crumpled and crushed. “Tell me where she is,” he whispered. 

Diana nodded toward his hand. “Take care with that token, Lord Wexford,” she said, “your wife’s life depends on what you do next.” With that she turned and walked through the back gate, disappearing under the branches of a tree in the village center. 

When Mulder emerged onto the street, walking in a daze, Byers, Frohike and Langly all came trotting up from different directions. 

“What happened?” Frohike said. “I saw no one. Langly?” 

Langly shook his head. They turned to Byers. 

“I saw no one but a gentlewoman praying over a grave,” Byers said, a little out of breath. 

Mulder couldn’t bring himself to meet their eyes. 

“A gentlewoman in a light green frock?” he asked. Byers nodded, his brow creasing in concern. “It was Miss Diana Spender,” Mulder said without inflection, “I have one week to put together 20,000 pounds.”

He turned toward the blacksmith’s and walked away from his friends. 

XxXxXxXxXxX

The next morning after bringing her breakfast and a fresh chamber pot, Duane Barry came to clear her plate and stood in the doorway of her room, hovering. 

“Mr. Barry?” she asked, looking at him in question. 

“If you care to follow me?” he said, “you’ll want to grab your washing.” He then turned on his heel and marched out the door. She grabbed her clothes and rushed to follow him before he could change his mind. 

He hastened through the house, and she looked around her, trying to memorize the layout. The house was well appointed, but not necessarily well kept. There seemed to be a layer of dust that lay over all the furnishings, reinforcing Barry’s stance that he was indeed the only other person (or at least the only staff) in the house. She listened for any other movement but heard none.

He led her down a hallway and a staircase, turning left, then right, and down a small set of stairs to the kitchen, through a scullery door and out into the blazing sunshine. He turned to her expectantly and she gathered her wits, looking about her. 

Several feet away sat a large copper boiler atop a small fire, which steamed in the sunlight. Next to it sat a tub, a two foot long wooden paddle and a short table upon which sat lye soap, chalk, a lemon, and a small bottle of clear liquid. She approached the table and gave the bottle a dubious sniff. Kerosene. 

“The kerosene is for bloodstains, ma’am. My lady,” Barry amended, looking away. She nodded. “Has a lady as fine as yerself ever done the washing, ma’am?” he asked. 

She took a deep breath and decided honesty was the best policy. She knew the basics, but...

“I have not,” she said, “But I am a woman of my time, Mr. Barry, eager to learn anything and everything.”

“You’ll boil the clothes first in the copper kettle,” he said, then pointed to the paddle, “you’ll want to agitate them for a quarter hour. Then into the tub with the lye soap. Once washed, you can treat for, uh, stains… Again, the kerosene is for blood,” his cheeks colored, “the chalk for grease, the lemon for any bleaching as it may need. Should you, uh, ever need to do laundry again, nearly every kitchen is outfitted similarly.” She nodded. “Then you wring out excess water, and hang to dry. There is no clothesline here, but some fine bushes and hedgerows. If’n you’re lucky, they’ll be dry by evening.” 

Scully looked about her, taking the opportunity to scan the area around the small kitchen garden. Beyond the garden gate, there was a decently sized but unkept lawn and beyond that, the iron fence. There was a back gate in the fence, likely used by household staff. 

She looked back toward Barry, who lowered himself onto a three-legged stool by the kitchen door and watched her warily. She turned toward the few pieces of clothing she needed to wash and dumped the lot of them into the boiling kettle. Picking up the paddle, she swirled it through the water, tentatively at first, and then with more force, careful to keep the hem of her skirts away from the small fire beneath it. 

Once she got into the rhythm of it, she turned to Barry, stirring all the while. “Is this your first kidnapping?” she asked, peering closely to gauge his reaction. “Or is it your main profession?”

He had the decency to look abashed.

“It is my first time being abducted,” she went on, and with that word, he got a queer look in his eye. “I suppose we shall get through it together,” she finished. She turned back to her washing. Her arms were beginning to ache and her brow to sweat, but she was too proud to do anything but carry on.

“I am sorry for it, ma’am,” he said, “my lady,” he corrected. 

“Are you?” she challenged him. 

He took a deep, bracing breath, and then he looked away. 

XxXxXxXxXxX

“I care not about the money. I will pay it,” Mulder said, as they sat around the dining room table later that same evening. The Wexford fortune was large enough to weather a 20,000 pound blow. “But I’ll not let the Countess be imprisoned by that man for another minute. We must find him. We must find  _ her _ .”

The other men around the table grumbled their agreement. Suzanne was so distraught by what had happened that she’d taken to eating all of her meals in her chambers. 

Mulder pushed the food around his plate for one more minute and then rose quickly, startling the footmen who stood about the room, ready to serve. Food tasted like ash in his mouth. The world had no flavor and less color without his wife beside him to enjoy it with. “I cannot countenance this,” he spat and turned to leave the room. “Alex!” he said -- his own footman had been helping serve the meal. 

“My lord?” Alex said, stepping forward. 

“With me,” Mulder said and strode from the room. Alex followed obediently. The footman had been extremely helpful; going out of his way to assist Mulder with nearly all of the searches for the Countess. Mulder thought that perhaps he felt guilt for not being able to identify the rider who had returned to the estate with Easterly the day Scully had gone missing. When pressed, Alex did admit that it could very well have been Duane Barry. Alas, there was nothing for it, Mulder concluded, but to carry on. 

“Get a coat,” Mulder said, making his way to the door of the manse, “and meet me in the stables. We’re riding into the village.”


	10. Chapter 10

Barry stuck his head in her door after lightly knocking on it about an hour after he served her dinner the next day. They had talked as Scully laundered her clothes and he’d opened up to her, explaining that his mother had taken on an indentured servitude the year before and had boarded a ship bound for the new world. How he had gotten word from her that she’d landed in Maryland, but hadn’t heard from her since. He desperately needed money for the voyage to go and look for her and when he’d been approached by CBG Spender, the man had offered not only a handsome payday but a ticket to America besides. 

When Scully told him that her husband would more than double whatever it was that Spender had offered him, Barry had only looked to the heavens and mumbled to himself. The man had demons, and Scully wasn’t entirely sure he didn’t belong in Bedlam. 

“Would you care for tea, my lady?” he asked her. 

When she accepted, he closed the door behind himself and she heard him descend the stairs. What she hadn’t heard was the scrape of the key in the lock of her door. She rose and tentatively turned the handle. It clicked open. 

If Barry already had tea steeping, it would take him only minutes -- perhaps less -- to collect it and bring it back up the stairs and to her room. She steeled herself. If she moved quickly, there was a chance she could make her escape. 

She hurried to the staircase and padded quietly down. Once on the landing, she heard the clopping approach of horses and looked out the landing window. A carriage had pulled through the gate and into the drive. She could make out the figure of Barry closing up the gate after it. It pulled to a stop and the coachman jumped down and opened the carriage’s door. A young lady in a light green dress descended the stairs, followed by a tall gentleman -- Spender. 

Scully flew down the stairs, her heart in her throat, and made for the kitchen, darting through the scullery door just as she heard the large door at the estate’s entrance open and voices enter. She ran past the washing bin, which was still set up in the small scullery yard, and on past the hedgerows where she’d dried her clothes only the day before. Darting to the servant’s door in the wrought iron gate, she tried the handle. It opened easily. It had not been latched. 

She ran. 

XxXxXxXxXxX

They arrived at the coaching inn on the south end of the village as night fell. A boy ran forward to collect their reins as soon as they dismounted. Mulder had had Alex riding Queen, who had been getting restless in the stables. 

A cold drizzle had started a few minutes after they left Ashford Park, and Mulder’s trousers were soaked through by the time they reached their destination, making his mood even darker, if that were possible. 

Before entering the building, Mulder turned to Alex. 

“I intend to question the proprietor about his involvement in collecting the ransom that has been put upon my wife,” he said. “I do not yet know the extent of the man’s involvement, if he is even yet involved. While I speak to him, I may signal you. If I do, I’d like you to go out to the stables and see what horses and conveyances are there and to… do whatever you have to do to make sure no one leaves should they be tipped off by our arrival.” Alex nodded and squared his shoulders. “Good man,” Mulder finished. 

They stepped through the establishment’s door shaking rain from their shoulders and stamping warmth into their feet. The innkeeper came forward and met them, looking between the two men in curiosity. He was a pale man -- short, with a sweaty bald pate and dirty hands he wiped on an equally dirty rag.

“Do you gentlemen require lodging?” the man asked, looking at Alex while he said it.

Though he was wet, Mulder was clearly a ranking member of society and expected a deference to his station. He took a menacing step forward and the innkeeper, realizing his mistake, stumbled. 

“Sir,” the man fumbled.

“My lord,” Mulder corrected him.

“My lord, my apologies,” he straightened himself, “will you be needing rooms, then?”

“We will be needing information,” Mulder said shortly. 

The innkeeper looked to Alex, as if for help. Mulder turned to his footman and pointed subtly at the door. Alex nodded once and turned on his heel, going back out into the rain to search and monitor the stables. 

“What… what kind of information?” The proprietor asked. 

“Is there an older gentleman staying here? Tall; as tall as me. A man with gaunt, craggy features? He might be in the company of his daughter -- a young woman dressed in a light green frock.”

“We are empty at present, sir. I mean my lord,” the man said. “There is no one staying here. I can offer you the finest suite-”

Mulder cut him off. 

“I’d like to see your guest register.”

“My-?”

“Your guest register,” Mulder snapped. Was the man dense? “Go get it.” 

When the innkeeper returned, he handed Mulder the leather-bound book, which he scanned for the name Spender. He found none. There were no names under today’s date, but there had been two guests the night before. An  _ M. and S. Beauchamp _ . 

“These guests,” Mulder said, pointing to the names, “who are they? What did they look like?”

“A young French couple, my lord,” he said, looking puzzled, “just come over from the continent.”

Mulder snapped the book closed in frustration and handed it back to the man. 

“What do you know of a trunk that you are to collect on Friday next?” Mulder asked him. 

“A trunk?” 

“Yes, a trunk,” Mulder said crossly, “a rectangular receptacle you pack clothes and other items in. With a lock.”

“On Friday next?” he said, and Mulder stared at him. The man, who stared dumbly back, finally answering, “I know of no such thing, sir.”

Mulder’s jaw clenched. He was getting nowhere. He pulled out a calling card from his pocket and pressed it into the man’s grubby hand. 

“If anyone approaches you about it, or you suddenly come to remember what I’m talking about, ride immediately to Ashford Park and ask for me. You will be handsomely rewarded.”

The innkeeper looked at the card in his hand greedily. 

“Of course, your grace,” he said. 

“I am not a duke,” Mulder said, turning away from the man. “Merely an Earl, looking for his Countess.”

He exited into the rain and found Alex waiting, holding the reins of Hercule and Queen. The footman handed over Hercule’s. 

“The stables are empty, but for a spare coaching team. The hostler told me that they have no guests this night.”

Mulder nodded, frustrated. “The proprietor either is an actor worthy of The Bard, or he yet knows nothing of the ransom he is meant to collect,” he said. 

Alex nodded back toward the stables. “The hostler was limping about after a horse stepped on his foot -- he can barely walk,” he said, “he’s offered me several days of work. If you would like, I can stay on here for a bit and see what might come of it?”

“You would do that?” Mulder asked, touched. 

Alex nodded earnestly. 

Mulder reached out and put his hand on the footman’s shoulder and squeezed. “I shall have Mr. Bixby double your pay.”

XxXxXxXxXxX

She ran as fast as her legs would carry her, her insubstantial footwear slipping on mud and wet grasses, her skirts catching on her legs as she pumped them. She ran across a meadow, toward the first clump of trees she could see. If anyone looked out the window of the house they would surely see her, and so she needed to get in amongst the trees. Once there she could gather her wits and her breath and take stock of her situation. She was sweating and struggling for breath by the time she burst through the treeline, startling a murder of crows and sending them into the air, cawing raucously. 

She bent forward, catching her breath and willing her heart to slow. When she felt she could, she moved behind a tree and looked toward the house, surprised at how far she’d come. She saw no sign of pursuit. 

Scully looked to the sea, orienting herself. Judging by the location of Ashford Park and the amount of time she’d been in Spender’s carriage, she had to be somewhere near Dover, which would place Byers’ estate north and very slightly west of where she presently was. She did not think it was possible to walk all the way to Ashford Park, but at the very least, she would be able to find a village or perhaps a passing carriage for help. She looked down at the shabby, ill-fitting borrowed dress and tried to be optimistic that any passersby would believe her when she told them she was the Countess of Wexford. 

Pointing herself in the general direction she needed to go, she closed her eyes and thought of her husband. She walked. 

XxX

It had been hours. Miles. And Dana Katherine Mulder, The Countess of Wexford, had not seen a soul. Nor a village. A few sheep, but no shepherd. And night was falling fast.

While she saw no sign of pursuit and anything would have been better than being under the thumb of CGB Spender, her circumstances had not exactly improved. She was without water and shelter, and for the most part without food -- she had found a hawthorn bush with almost-ripe berries and had eaten what she could. But that had been hours ago. She was hungry. She was thirsty. She was beginning to despair. 

There was no moon to speak of and it was becoming harder and harder to see as the sun sunk below the horizon -- colder, too. 

She wrapped her arms around herself trying to preserve some heat. Her shoes, lightweight house slippers which were already ill-fitting, having been one of the borrowed items of clothing Duane Berry brought to her, were drenched, and her feet felt like blocks of ice. She would need to stop soon, rest, and warm herself. Somehow. 

She was at the bottom of a large hill, and decided she would climb to the top to find out what she could see and make a decision when she got there. Perhaps there would be a village. Dear God, she hoped there would be a village. 

Slipping several times on her ascent, the front of her dress and hands were covered with mud (and Lord knew what else, as she could see hoofprints in the grass even in the meager light) by the time she crested the rise. And when she stood tall at the apex of the hill and made a full turn… there was nothing. She took a deep breath and willed the pinprick of tears she could feel forming in her eyes not to fall. 

A breeze came out of the west and lifted the hairs that had pulled loose from her pins, sending shivers through her. She was becoming concerned that she might take a chill from which she wouldn’t recover. Seized by another shiver, she squeezed herself tight. 

_ Mulder _ . She would think of Mulder and warm herself with the memory of his embrace. She could almost feel the hard plane of his chest against her back, his large hands wrapped around her, whispering words of comfort in her ear. 

As she stumbled down the other side of the rise, heading toward a low rock wall that she thought she could perhaps use to shield the wind, she wondered how Mulder was faring without her, if he was beside himself with worry. She missed him; his voice and his touch and his scent. 

When she reached the rock wall, she was about to kneel down beside it when she heard a horse whinny nearby. She was suddenly alert. Where there were horses, there were people. She tried to figure out the direction she’d heard the sound, when she heard it again. A high, excited whinny that was somehow familiar. She began trotting toward it. 

She ran past the fence and over a small rise and then pulled up short. She could hardly believe her eyes. There, hobbled outside of a tiny, ramshackle gamekeeper's hut hidden behind a copse of trees, stood her mare Queen, who again whinnied and was bobbing her head excitedly. Scully rushed over and pet the animal’s soft, warm nose. She couldn’t believe her luck. The horse must have caught Scully’s scent when she came down the hill. And if Queen was here, that meant-

“ _ Mulder _ !” she shouted, and rushed to the hut’s door. It flew open as she reached it, and there, standing before her holding a single flickering candle and wearing a look of absolute shock, stood their footman, Alex. 

“Alex!” she gasped, and, nearly weeping with relief, threw herself into his bewildered embrace. 

XxXxXxXxXxX

The Earl paced through Ashford Park as though he were a spirit roaming the halls. 

“I worry for him.” 

Melvin Frohike was not born a gentleman, and now barely qualified. Born to a mother in the poor house, he knew struggle and pain. And the Ninth Earl of Wexford was struggling. Even an aristocratic blue blood still leaked red when you cut him, he thought, shaking his head. He had never seen a man more devoted to his wife, he had never seen a couple more obviously besotted. Mulder’s pain was as real as it got. 

“As do I,” Byers said glumly. “I was with him at school when he received the news of his mother’s death. And even then he was not so affected as he is now. If we do not find the Countess soon, I worry what he might do.”

Langly silently poured several glasses of brandy and pressed one into Frohike’s hand. “I expect he’ll kill Spender. One way or the other,” he said, pressing his spectacles further up his nose. 

“You mean whether he is able to bring his wife home or whether he is unable to?” Byers asked, staring darkly at the mahogany depths of his cut crystal snifter.

Langly grunted.

Frohike took a breath and shook himself of the thought. “Let us hope it is ‘one way,’ my friend,” he said, and took a healthy swig. 

XxXxXxXxXxX 

“My lady!” Alex exclaimed, “What are you -- how is this? Are you well?”

Scully released him and stepped back. 

“I’m-” she began, and then was seized with another chill, “I’m cold,” she finished. 

Alex shook himself and stepped back into the tiny hut, escorting her inside. There was a cheery fire burning in a small fireplace, and a straw-filled mattress on the floor upon which sat several rumpled wool blankets. 

“Sit,” he instructed, pulling a rough-hewn stool from against the wall and setting it in front of the fire. Scully sat, and Alex grabbed one of the blankets from the bed and wrapped it around her shoulders. 

“Thank you,” she said, gratefully, pulling the blanket tightly around herself. 

“My lady, what-”

“Kidnapped,” she said, staring into the flames. “And I’ve escaped. How is the Earl?”

Alex looked at her. “Not well, my lady. He is beside himself with worry. He has not slept. He barely eats.”

Scully rose, casting about impotently. “I must go to him.”

Alex held up a hand. “Stay,” he said, “warm yourself.” He handed her a small bladder of water and several biscuits wrapped in a linen handkerchief. He pulled a hat low over his head. “I shall ride for Lord Wexford,” he said, “I shall bring him here this very hour.”

It wasn’t until she could hear Queen’s hoofbeats pounding off into the distance that she thought to ask him why he was there at all. 


	11. Chapter 11

Scully had fallen into a dreamless sleep, warm and feeling impossibly safe. Birdsong had started with the dawn, and as she sat up groggily on the small mattress on the dusty floor, she smiled to herself. She would see Mulder soon. Her nightmare was at an end. 

She rose from the pallet and tried dusting off the dried mud and dirt from the hem of her frock, but it was useless. This particular dress was likely ruined. Not that she would be sad to see it go. It could burn for all she cared. 

She pulled out all the hairpins from what remained of her coiffure, running her hands through her hair as best she could. The long auburn locks which, when unbound, flowed lushly halfway down her back (one of Mulder’s favorite things, or so he had said to her in the heat of passion), had some luster to it and still smelled faintly of lavender. On a whim, he had bought her aluminum hair pins at a shop in the village of Ashford when the guests from the estate had alighted there one rainy day last week. She remembered him kissing her hair softly and telling her he was sparing no expense. She smiled to herself and tried to tame her locks into something resembling presentable respectability, plaiting and then pinning it up. The Countess wanted to look as best she could for her Earl. 

The fire had burned itself out in the hearth, but the hut was still warm, and getting warmer by the minute as the sun streamed in through the tiny window pane on the far wall. While she waited, she closed her eyes and named to herself various chemical compounds and their respective weights -- something she used to do to pass time while doing needlework or attempting to (badly) play the pianoforte. 

In 1801 Joseph Proust announced that every chemical compound has a fixed and definite composition; that when substances unite chemically they do so in definite ratios by weight -- then came John Dalton four years later, with the second great law of combination, which had come to be called the law of multiple proportions. Dalton introduced atomic theory into chemistry, and now the great problem was to determine the relative weights of the atoms. The most eminent scientific minds (men,  _ naturally _ ) gave their attention to the determination of the atomic weights and of the arrangement of the atoms in compounds. She had read everything she could on the subject, fascinated by the idea of everything in the universe existing on such a small, basic scale. Protons. Neutrons. In the end, everything came down to attraction. 

Even she and her husband, she thought. Especially she and her husband. When she tired of chemistry, perhaps next she would study biology. Though, she thought with a flush, they did a near nightly biological case study. Man. Woman. Attraction. Sex. 

She was roused from her thoughts by the sound of approaching hoofbeats and moments later, she heard Alex’s voice approaching the hut’s small door. 

“She’s in here,” she heard him say, and then the door opened and he strode through it, looking a bit different than he had last night in the light of the single candle. 

“Alex,” she said warmly, but when he turned to her, he did so with a sneer, hair curling over his forehead in a rakish way, his eyes cold and almost obsidian in color.

“She’s awake,” he said without feeling to some unknown person just outside the door, the figure looming in the doorway, blocking out the sun. Mulder?

She heard the strike of a match and then saw the cold creep of tobacco smoke purl in the air through the small space, hitting her nose in one acrid punch. 

“No,” she whispered, gritting her teeth with fury.

XxX

She came to consciousness in the back of Spender’s carriage once again, the sense memory sinking through her veins like lead. Her head pounded, and when she brought her bound hands to her temple on instinct, she found an enormous goose egg and the crusted, sticky remains of dried blood. She groaned. 

The carriage leaned ever so slightly to the right, its wheels making a fairly sharp turn onto a bumpy road. She finally glanced up to look at the man sitting across from her. 

There was rage pouring from his eyes and his nostrils were flared. The leather of the gloves he wore creaked in the air between them as he squeezed his wolf’s head walking stick. He raised it and pointed it at her. 

“There will be no new opportunities for escape,” he barked, looking at her intently. He opened his mouth to speak further when the carriage lurched to a stop. He didn’t wait for Alex, who’d been acting as coachman, to open the door, but flung it open himself, then leaned back in to grab Scully by her bound hands, pulling her bodily out of the conveyance so quickly that she stumbled when her feet hit the ground. 

She barely had time to look around before he was pulling her along behind him toward a small, ancient cottage that was tucked back amongst some trees. She had just gotten a glimpse of the sand-colored manor house she’d been kept in previously before she was tugged through the doorway of the cottage in the woods. The manor house was not far away, down a long, winding path littered with weeds and wildflowers that didn’t look like it got much use. Spender pulled her inside and slammed the door behind them. 

She braced herself when he grabbed his walking stick with both hands, but instead of striking her, he pulled at the silver wolf’s head and withdrew a long blade, triangular and sinister, its blade darker than any metal ought to be. 

She took a step away from him. 

He smiled at her, an evil-looking grin, and Scully was reminded of the skeleton presiding over Hell in Jan Van Eyck’s  _ The Last Judgement _ . She thought of demons. Of serpents and bats. “Hold out your bindings,” he said to her.

Tentatively, she held out her hands. He grabbed them roughly and used the wolf’s head dagger to cut the knots from her wrists. When the cloth fell away, she took a relieved breath, only to be startled into a gasp when he struck, quick as a viper, and grabbed her by the hair. 

“Our games are at an end, Lady Wexford,” he hissed, his mouth mere inches from her own. She grabbed at his hands, but he twisted them harder, and she could hear the hairpins falling from her head and tinkling merrily onto the slate floor. “Your husband  _ will _ pay.”

With that, he began cutting at her hair with the dagger, sawing and hacking at it until the whole thick plait came off in his hand. Her scalp felt as though it were on fire. 

She raised her hands up to feel the unevenly shorn hair that now ended at her chin, and the cottage’s door slammed shut with a loud, metallic  _ chink _ . He was gone.

XxXxXxXxXxX

Alex and Queen had returned from the coaching inn after several days with no news. 

“I fear the proprietor knows nothing,” the footman had told Mulder, sadly, “and there have been no guests matching the description of your Mr. Spender.”

Mulder had given him his thanks and told the man to get some rest. 

Later that day, a scream wret the air from the entrance of the house. Mulder catapulted down the stairs to find a maid with a hand to her chest sitting on the floor in shock, another maid holding her other hand, trying to calm her. The Butler, Mr. Headly, was hovering over them both and Mulder noticed a large box with the lid half-off sitting just inside the manse’s door. 

Byers, Frohike and Langly all came skidding onto the scene only moments behind him. 

“The… the Countess,” the prone maid said, shakily pointing to the box. 

Mulder moved forward, awash with dread. When he pushed aside the lid, there, sitting inside of it like a coiled snake ready to strike, sat the long, thick plait of Scully’s titian hair. 

He recoiled, falling back momentarily, then moved forward again, lifting it up and out. The end of the hair that had been cut had not been trimmed gently or with finesse, but rather hacked at, likely with a sharp, short blade. It must have been painful for her. 

“Who delivered this?” Mulder asked. “Who?!” 

The maid to whom he’d spoken leaned back in fear, and he took a breath in order to calm himself. 

“Mary,” Byers said calmly, and the young woman looked to her employer. 

“There was no delivery, sir,” she finally said, “I was going about my duties and there it was, sitting inside the front door.”

Everyone looked to Mr. Headly. 

“She is quite right,” he said calmly, “there have been no deliveries today. Nor yet any post.”

Mulder brought himself to his full height and addressed no one, staring straight ahead. “He’ll die for this,” he said with controlled wrath. He then stalked off, leaving the smell of lavender in his wake. 

XxXxXxXxXxX

Scully stared at the back of the door, running her hands through her now-short locks. It felt so odd, but it was also a bit freeing, she thought, and her head felt pounds lighter. She bent down and collected pins that had escaped onto the floor, setting them in a pile on a nearby table, and placing a few in the fringe near her forehead to keep it out of her face. 

She took a turn about the room. She tried the door, just in case. Locked and secured from the outside. 

The cottage was old, made of thick stone, the windows tiny and set far back in the walls -- she’d have no hope of climbing through one. There were three rooms -- the one she was in near the door that seemed to serve as great room and main living space. A small bedroom just off that, supplied with a small, rough hewn bed and straw-filled mattress, covered with a single woolen blanket. The third room was a kitchen, with a large fireplace and old monstrous table that bowed in the middle from year’s worth of scrubbing. There were bottles and crockery that lined two large shelves, and a small scullery. The scullery seemed fairly well stocked, as was the kitchen, where on the table sat two fresh loaves of bread and several hunks of cheese, a small bowl of apples, three lemons and a large bowl of eggs. An extra circuit around the kitchen and she found three pails full of water that she moved onto the main table -- she covered each with a large plate to keep out dust and debris. It was looking like she would not be fed, but would have to feed herself with what was left here. Very well, she thought. There was enough food and water for a week. Perhaps more. 

She wondered what Spender’s plan for her was. Was it only ransom he was after? If so, Mulder would surely pay it. 

She snooped through the scullery, taking inventory. There she found a decent quantity of concentrated lye, five candles, two small bottles of kerosene (but no lamps), a bar of Pears soap, a large glass bottle with a heavy cork stopper that smelled as if it had once contained either wine or vinegar, several empty crockery bottles of various sizes, two bottles of whisky, matches, chalk, salt, and a small bottle that appeared to be turpentine, but that she couldn’t get open. 

In the main room there was a single shelf on which sat several books, all in either French or Latin. So she would not go completely mad with boredom. 

There was no wardrobe and so no other changes of clothes, though she could probably launder what she had in the large pot in the kitchen fireplace (which was well stocked with wood, she was pleased to see). She was suddenly thankful that Duane Barry had walked her through the process. 

He was a sad sort of man and easy to manipulate and she could see how he’d been an easy mark for Spender. He was shy and unworldly, had trouble even meeting her eye. Why, all it had taken was for her to mention her courses and he was practically blithering, and had seen her outside without so much as-

She stopped short. Her courses. She had been in captivity for several days now, and had been at Byers’ estate for more than a week… She did the arithmetic in her head and then did it again. She was late. Alarmingly so. 

She took a breath and brought a hand low over her stomach. Her heart began to pound.  _ Oh, Mulder _ . Perhaps she was not alone in this cottage after all. 

XxXxXxXxXxX

Mulder thought back to the last time he had seen Scully -- had he known then it would be the last time, he never would have left. 

_ He had his hand on her breast, and was thrusting into her gently from behind. In the many weeks since their marriage, her body had learned to accommodate his, and he met little resistance as he slid into her with a hiss of satisfaction. This was lazy lovemaking, both of them half asleep in the dim light of morning.  _

_ “I do not need to hunt today,” he finally spoke, nuzzling his nose into the delicate skin behind her ear, “for I have found Artemis, and she is here in this bed with me.” _

_ Scully gave a little moan and then pressed back into him, a signal he was beginning to learn meant that she wanted more.  _

_ “I-” she stopped to take a breath “I don’t believe the Goddess of the Hunt is anywhere near here, Mulder,” she said breathily, “for she is also the goddess of wild animals and vegetation and ah-” Mulder had thrust into her with more force and he could feel her muscles clench around him, “and… chastity.”  _

_ “Chastity?” Thrust. “Perhaps you are right.” Thrust. “Here before me is Aphrodite, and her sea-foam eyes.”  _

_ It was then that Scully reached her peak, and he ascended with her, grabbing onto her hips tightly and burying his face into the silky mane of her hair.  _

_ She rolled away from him onto her stomach moments later and turned to assess him with half-lidded eyes. She licked her lips, her movements slow.  _

_ “Aphrodite may have been born from the foam of the sea,” she said lazily, “but I rather did always like Artemis best. I pictured her similar to Boudica, with a sword in one hand and a bow in the other.” _

_ “A sword in one hand, eh?” Mulder asked, nudging her with a finger.  _

_ “They say she is the strongest of them all, for she not only oversees chastity but also childbirth.” _

_ “Chastity  _ and _ childbirth? A confusing combination.” _

_ Scully laughed, a delicious peal through the air of the room.  _

_ Mulder rolled out of the bed and pulled the bell to summon Danny to help him dress.  _

_ “Perhaps she’ll be with me today,” he said, “and I shall bring back our dinner, the fattest of the lot for my goddess.” _

_ Scully smiled at him and rolled over to go back to sleep, her hair like a cape of spun gold fanning the pillows behind her. _

XxXxXxXxXxX

Scully looked at her reflection in one of the pails of water. It was not… altogether atrocious. Her hair looked rather like a farmboy bob, and she was certain that someone with cleverer hands than she could do something with it, even for more formal events… perhaps pin it with pearls and feathers. But. That was a problem for a different time. For now, her only concern was keeping it out of her eyes while she worked. 

She had spent the whole of the night alternately thinking of the babe that perhaps was even now growing in her belly, and the problem of how she was to save them both. She had determined as she lay looking at an unfamiliar ceiling that she would not let CGB Spender control her or her fate. 

Firstly, she needed to put an end to her imprisonment. And then… Well, then she needed to put an end to Spender and his evil machinations. Duane Barry might yet help her again, but Scully suspected that Barry had been relieved of his prisoner oversight duties, or worse. What with the supplies of food and water that had been left in the cottage, and Spender’s warning: “There will be no new opportunities for escape,” the likelihood that there might be anyone she could overtake or convince to help her were not good. It was up to her to save her own skin. 

And perhaps also that of her child. 

XxXxXxXxXxX 

After the Countess's hair had been discovered, the mood around Ashford Park was... penultimate, thought Frohike. Though the day was clear, it felt as though something was brewing. And when the storm broke, well, there was no telling what damage would be wrought. 

Mulder had begun ranging further and further afield, riding his horse to every farm, every tenant, every public house and hen house in search of his wife. He was a man possessed. 

Frohike was exiting the library, which happened to be nearest the back staircase that came up from below stairs, when he saw a maid coming up the stairway and rushing off into the house. The look on her face was excited intrigue, which was enough to incite the same feeling in himself. On a whim, he turned toward the stairway that led below stairs and followed them down. 

The hallways were narrow and labyrinthine, and there were members of Byers' household staff huddled together in gossiping circles, paying no attention to the erstwhile gentleman who walked among them. 

"Go and get Mr. Headly. This very minute!" he heard from around a corner. A scullery maid went running past him and when he rounded the corner he came upon the Cook patting a man's hand and pressing a cup of tea into it. 

"Now, Duane, where have you been?" she asked kindly. 

Frohike's eyes widened. 

"Duane?" he said, "This is the groom, Duane Barry?" he asked excitedly. 

Cook nodded at him. "He's..." she started, "he's not himself. He says he'll speak only to the Earl. Not even Sir Byers, his own master!" She sounded scandalized. 

Frohike turned and ran from the kitchens, launching himself through the scullery and on out the door to the back of the estate, running toward the stables for all he was worth. He skidded inside. 

"The Earl,” Frohike was breathless from running. Several grooms stood around looking at him in alarm and confusion.

“Sir?” one of them asked. 

"Where is the Earl?" Frohike gasped.

"He rode west, sir."

"Find him, now. Which of you is the best rider? Tell him that Duane Barry has returned."

One of the groom's eyes flashed wide and he nodded, and not a minute later, as Frohike was walking quickly back toward the house, was galloping out of the stable yards and toward the western fields. 

Frohike trotted up the stairs of the manse and let himself in the door, waiting not for the butler or even a footman. When he rounded the corner that led to the drawing room, he heard his friend's voice, raised in anger, verging on hysteria: 

"Did you hurt her?!" 

"No!"

Frohike walked through the doorway and found Byers and Langly standing close to the former groom Duane Barry, who sat in one of the chairs, his face a frightened mask. 

Langley grabbed the man’s hand and raised it. He pointed to blood on the man's cuff. "What is this?!"

"I'm sorry," Barry said. "I had to take her. I hope he's not hurting her. I'm sorry."

"Where is she?!" Byers shouted. 

"I... I'll tell the Earl. Bring me the Earl, and I'll tell him."

Langly threw up his arms in frustration and Byers, looking as steely and angry as Frohike had ever seen him, brushed past Frohike in the doorway of the room, Langly on his heels. He turned to the handful of servants that had appeared in the hallway, mainly maids, and Wexford's footman, Alex. 

"Nobody goes in or out of that room," Byers said. The footman nodded at him and took station at the closed door, standing tall. 

Mr. Headly appeared as Byers was walking with purpose toward the main stairway. 

"Where is the Earl?" Byers asked his man. 

"I don't know, sir-"

"Find him!" Byers barked. 

Langly drifted to Frohike's side. 

"I have never seen him like this," his business partner said, "I am impressed."

Frohike couldn't help but agree. Not ten minutes later, Mulder burst through the door of the manse out of breath and smelling of horse. He grabbed Frohike by the shoulders.

“Barry?” he said, “Barry has returned?”

Frohike nodded encouragingly. “And has word of the Countess’s location, apparently. He’ll tell only you.” Frohike gestured to the door of the drawing room where the footman Alex had been standing guard. He was no longer there, and the door to the room was ajar. 

Mulder stumbled through it with Frohike hot on his heels. Both men pulled up short. 

Barry was on the ground, and Alex was leaning over him.

"What happened?!" Mulder asked, taking several halting steps into the room. 

"He was gagging," Alex said, leaning back on his heels. “I tried to help.” 

The man was lying upon the ground, gasping for air. Mulder ran to him. “Duane!” Mulder said, kneeling beside him. Frohike skidded to the man’s other side. 

Barry, his eyes wide and still gasping for air, looked once at Mulder beseechingly. Then he took one almighty breath, his entire body spasming once, and exhaled, slumping to the floor. Frohike could tell just by looking at him -- the man was dead. 

“Duane!” Mulder said one more time and then stood in a daze. His eyes cast about the room. “Alex, what hap-” he paused, mid-sentence. 

The footman was gone. 


	12. Chapter 12

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is dedicated to Lin. My science guru, fic aficionado, and all around sister from another mister.

Scully looked about the cottage around her with a critical eye. With what she had on hand, there had to be something she could do or use to escape this place.

The windows were a non-starter; they were too small to fit through. It would have to be the door. It was locked from the outside -- the door itself, ancient and made of oak; she could pound at it for days and never get through. She briefly considered using leverage to perhaps lift it off its hinges, but it was set tightly and even if she could put together some kind of lever and fulcrum, it had nowhere to go. The lock itself was also old, made of iron. Even with the strength of a blacksmith she wouldn’t be able to smash it, either.

A blacksmith, she thought. A smith doesn’t make things with strength only -- he heats the metal to make it malleable enough to work with. Perhaps if she could heat the iron of the lock -- it was an old, simple one, with few pins -- just enough to soften it, a swift, strong kick could break the mechanism… 

She had firewood enough for a blaze, but no coal, the fuel of the smith. Wood would not burn hot enough, nor steady or strong enough to do what she needed it to do. On top of that, she had no way of directing the heat. 

She wandered into the scullery of the kitchen, assessing its contents. 

The lye could be helpful, she thought. Concentrated lye mixed with water would make a fairly corrosive solution, but even if she applied it to the door or lock, it would take far more time than she had to damage or weaken either enough to break through them. The kerosene was a thought, but would burn out quickly and she had no desire to breathe either smoke or fumes -- particularly since she couldn’t open the windows for fresh air. 

She paced the cottage, thinking, eventually grabbing an apple from the table and shining it on the grungy front of her frock. She took a bite, chewing contemplatively. 

She had the items in the kitchen. She had a few books, the clothes she wore. The bed, two chairs from the main sitting room and a small, sturdy side table that sat between them, upon which she’d deposited the many hair pins that had fallen out of her coiffure when Spender hacked it off. She fingered one in her hand. 

Aluminum, she thought. Something was pinging in the back of her mind. Aluminum would react with lye if water were added -- the reaction of which would rapidly create an evolution of hydrogen gas. It would be highly exothermic and the hydrogen itself would ignite and burn at an extremely high temperature. It probably wouldn’t burn long, but if she were able to build up enough pressure and direct the reaction exactly where she wanted it… 

She rushed into the scullery and pulled up the large glass vinegar bottle, setting it on the ancient kitchen table. The bottle was sturdy and large, with a long narrow neck and thick cork that fit tightly enough in the opening that she struggled to get it off. It could work, she thought.

Scully dragged the heavy end table from the living space over to the door. It was about one foot too low. She brought over several of the books and stacked them so that they leaned against the door. She brought over the bottle and set it on the table, then leaned it against the books, facing the narrow bottle opening at the lock. It was a bit too high. She took another bite of apple. Only one thing to be done. 

She opened the top book and, apologizing -- out loud, to a book -- she tore about ten pages out. Then another ten. She tried lining up the bottle again. A few more centimeters should do it. She ripped out another thirty pages of the book, the thought alone making her sick to her stomach, and again lined up the bottle. Perfect. The neck and mouth of the bottle were positioned directly at the lock’s keyhole. Now she needed to secure it there. 

Looking down at the bottom of the dirty, too-long hem of her borrowed frock -- which was filthy and torn in two places, she leaned down and grabbed onto it. And pulled. Once she got a finger through one of the tears, the rest was easy -- she yanked and ripped and was able to tear off the whole of the hem in one long, grimy strip. She put the strip of fabric over the top of the bottle and down under the table. If she pulled and knotted it well, it should secure the bottle in place. If it even worked, the pressure that built up inside the bottle would force its way out of the neck and mouth -- eventually blowing out the cork and acting as a kind of concentrated torch. If it burned for even ten to twenty seconds, it would do so at an incredible heat. The iron of the pins in the lock would soften, at least a little, and -- if she were lucky -- one or two swift and immediate kicks and the lock would fail.

 _If_ her knowledge of science was correct. 

She remembered a dialogue she’d had with Mulder only a few weeks before when he lamented the lack of common sense and intelligence in their society at large:

 _“Yes, but you’ve had all the education English society offers it’s young_ **_gentlemen_ ** _,” she had said._

_“Yes, where I was taught to suss out the inflections of our dear language,” he replied, looking at her levelly. “You were denied an education.”_

_“All young ladies are denied an education,” she crossed her arms over her chest._

_“A practice I don’t intend to continue should we be blessed with daughters,” he had mumbled, moving to her and nuzzling her neck to distract her from her anger._

She’d had to educate herself, and she had done so. Now she needed to see if she was as smart as she hoped. 

XxXxXxXxXxX

The house was in utter chaos. Through the night and into the next day, it had been searched high and low for the missing footman to no avail. He was the last person to have seen Duane Barry -- who had been about to tell them where Scully was being held -- alive, and he’d up and disappeared like a sneeze in the wind. No one had seen him coming or going, and the bed where the man had slept was perfectly made, the corners pulled tight. He had left no possessions to speak of -- nothing to direct anyone to where he might have gone. 

Mulder felt flayed. His chest laid bare and cracked open, his heart torn out, and all that was left was an aching chasm of gristle and bone and sinew. 

Byers was in his study going over maps of the estate and surrounding areas with the land steward when Mulder wandered in. The two men were leaning over an older drawn map discussing the property lines and ownership of nearby estates -- they were all certain that Scully was being kept somewhere nearby. Mulder flopped onto a divan in the corner of the room doing his best not to give in completely to despair. 

Headly appeared in the study doorway. 

“Lord Wexford,” he said, bowing deferentially. “Someone to see you, my lord.” He nodded his head toward the house’s main door. 

Mulder excused himself from Byers and the steward and made his way toward the door, the dull sound of talking increasing in volume and urgency as he approached.

“I know this isn’t my house, but I say we don’t let the brigand in until he states his business!” Mr. Frohike all but shouted. 

“Sir, all you need know of my business is that it is not yours,” a voice gruffed from the doorway. Mulder recognized the grumble and felt the faintest flame of hope reignite in his chest. 

“Did I hear there’s a brigand at the door?” Mulder said loudly, causing the amassed people therein (Mr. Frohike, Mr. Langly, two footmen, and the two figures standing outside) to quiet instantly and turn toward his voice. “Walter,” he said, and the gathered retinue parted for him as the Red Sea did for Moses.

The taller figure in the doorway gave a half smile and reached forward to shake Mulder’s hand. “My lord.” He nodded at Mulder and looked to the other man who stood in the doorway, a long leather greatcoat hanging from wiry, muscular shoulders, his hair cropped close to his head. “My associate and I need to speak with you. Urgently.”

Mulder’s smile faded and, with an apologetic look to Frohike, gestured for the newcomers to follow him through the house and into Byers’ study, where the baronet was standing, looking fairly startled by the appearance of the newcomers. He quickly dismissed his steward.

When Frohike and Langly came into the study after them and stood on either side of their titled business associate with crossed arms and suspicious looks, Captain Walter Skinner, whose acquaintance with Mulder went back some way, looked at him warily. 

“Lord Wexford, the information we came to share with you is on a manner of some… delicacy.”

“In reference to the matter I wrote to you of?” Mulder asked, referring to his inquiry of CBG Spender. Captain Skinner nodded. “They know all,” Mulder finished, nodding at Langly to close the door. 

Skinner squared his jaw, digesting this, and then nodded toward his companion. “This is John Doggett, he is an associate of mine at Bow Street.”

“My lord,” Doggett said shortly. 

“Rumor is sweeping through Town that the Countess of Wexford has been kidnapped for ransom,” Skinner said, looking at Mulder through small wire glasses. 

“How I wish the rumors weren’t true,” Mulder said. 

Skinner nodded, as though he had suspected as much. “When we heard, we knew we could not delay. We have information on this man, this CGB Spender.”

Heads raised and all eyes in the room sharpened. 

“As I explained in my letter, ‘Spender’ is merely an alias.”

“Carl Gerhardt Bush, Jack Colquitt, Raul Bloodworth,” piped up Doggett, “the list is long. But the name we came across most recently drew our attention.” 

Doggett looked to Skinner, who took over explanation: 

“Does the name Alec Fitzsimmons mean anything to you?” 

Mulder shook his head. 

“Fitzsimmons runs an import business out of Lewisham. On the books, it’s nothing very interesting as far as what the man trades in-“ 

“Off the books, however-“ Doggett cut in. Mulder looked to the former Captain.

“Munitions,” Skinner said, “we have reason to suspect he is running powder and munitions to Bonaparte.” Mulder saw Frohike raise his brows. “But that’s another matter,” he went on, “the import business itself was established some thirty years ago, but has recently taken on a silent partner. A partner by the name of CGB Spender,” Skinner went on. “And when we paid a visit to the offices of the Fitzsimmons Trading Company, a likeness of its founders was hanging on the wall.”

Skinner nodded to Doggett, who pulled a rolled up piece of canvas from inside his coat. He unfurled it and spread it out on Byers’ large desk, which was still covered in the maps and pages from Byers’ conversation with the Ashford Park land steward. 

The painting showed several gentlemen, all but one in the picture standing. The seated gentleman was-

“Spender,” Mulder said, pointing his finger at the man’s face. 

“Also goes by the name of Alec Fitzsimmons,” Skinner said. “The man is as crooked as they come. Likely trying to hide money from the Crown, using multiple aliases in multiple businesses. But you must again look at the portrait, sir.” He gestured to one of the standing gentlemen on the edge of the canvas. Mulder inhaled in surprise. 

“My father,” he said. Though the man was younger than Mulder had ever seen him, it was unmistakably the Eighth Earl of Wexford. 

“Did you know they had a connection, my lord?” Doggett asked. 

“I do now,” Mulder said, and handed over the old envelope marked with an X. 

Skinner and Doggett both read it and exchanged a look. 

“So what of this man?” Mulder asked, impatience catching up with him. 

“Alec Fitzsimmons owns a house on Wimpole Street,” Skinner said, “a large one, with an equally impressive entourage of household staff.”

“Did you recently hire anyone on at Wexford House in Town?” Doggett asked. 

“That would be a question better put to my butler,” Mulder said. 

“I did ask it of your butler, sir,” Doggett said, “And he told me one of your footmen fell ill very recently and he was forced to hire on someone new. A servant by the name of Alexander Krycek, who had come with excellent references and who traveled with you here to Ashford Park.”

Dread began to purl through Mulder’s chest. 

“Before he was hired on at your London House,” Skinner began, “he had worked for the previous three years as head footman in the household of Alec Fitzsimmons.”

Mulder’s fists clenched so hard his knuckles popped. 

“Is he currently below stairs?” Doggett asked, resting his hand upon the wooden handle of a pistol that hung from his belt.

“He is not,” Mulder answered, his voice like iced steel.

“We believe he poisoned your footman Samuel in order to secure the position and assist this Spender in abducting your wife.”

Mulder grabbed onto the edge of Byers’ mahogany desk and actually lifted one side of the leviathan, so fueled by rage that he had the strength of ten men. He slammed it back down. 

“That is, ah-” Skinner started, looking at Mulder with trepidation, “not the only coincidence we found when we looked into your staff and the staff of Alec Fitzsimmons.”

Mulder felt his knees go weak under him. 

XxXxXxXxXxX

Scully had filled the bottom of the glass bottle with lye and put in every hair pin she could find -- a considerable amount, given the length and thickness of her former tresses. All that needed to be done now was to pour in the water and quickly secure the cork. Once that was done, she would need to hurry behind the stone wall of the bedroom and hope that not only did her plan work, but that it didn’t backfire and blow her to smithereens in the process. 

In theory, the reaction should start as soon as water hit the two substances at the bottom of the bottle. Hydrogen would form quickly and the pressure would build even more so -- and if she resecured the cork tightly in order to trap that pressure, in almost no time at all, a fire of the hottest flame would be forcibly directed at the door’s lock. 

She rolled some of the pages she’d torn out of the book into a kind of funnel and placed it in the top of the bottle which was secured tightly to the table below it. She picked up the pail of water with shaking hands. She poured. 

She immediately heard the bubbling of the reaction. As soon as the bucket was empty, she dropped it and slammed the cork home, giving it one solid hit with her fist. Then she ran as fast as her legs would carry her into the bedroom and ducked down. 

It happened even more swiftly than she thought it would. She heard the pop of the cork and then a low ominous hissing. She peeked around the wall. There were no flames that she could see ( _invisible flame_ ! she thought, _extraordinary!_ ), but there was a black shadow of charring creeping up the side of the oaken door and already the metal of the lock had an orangish glow. 

Her stomach leapt into her throat. It had worked! As soon as the hissing sound ended, she ran at the door and slammed it for all she was worth. The latch gave a little and she kicked it again. It flew open with a dull, muffled thud, and Scully stepped out into the blazing sunlight. 

XxXxXxXxXxX

“I beg your pardon?” Mulder said, lowering himself into the nearest chair. 

Skinner and his man Doggett shared a look. 

“There is yet another member of your staff that once worked for Fitzsimmons.”

“Who is he?”

“Not he, sir,” Doggett said, “but she. The Countess’s lady’s maid, Prudence.”

“But… but Prudence has worked in our household for several years,” Mulder said, “before I even ascended to the Earldom.”

Skinner exchanged another look with Doggett and raised the envelope with the large, black X -- the accusation against Mulder’s father of an illegitimate child. “And now I believe we may know why,” he said. 

Mulder felt the blood drain from his face, and he gestured weakly for Skinner to go on.

“When we spoke with your Housekeeper, we learned that Prudence was hired by the Eighth Earl himself. According to her, the girl had been raised at the country estate of Alec Fitzsimmons, an orphan that the Fitzsimmons estate took on as a charity case. She worked in the household as a child, and when she came of age, it was said she was promised a position at Henwick Priory -- one, should she perform her duties well, she would keep until she reached the age of five and forty, at which point there was set aside a small pension. An odd arrangement, which we could not figure out -- until we saw this.” Mulder looked to the envelope in his hand. 

“I know my finances back to front,” Mulder said, “and I know nothing of this arrangement.”

“Mrs. Paxton said that the girl’s wages are paid, as any other maid’s would be, from the household account. The pension, however, is held in a private trust set up by your father.”

“Prudence is my sister,” he said breathlessly. 

“I now believe so, yes,” said Skinner, his face set in a grim line. “And we should talk to her. This very minute.”

XxX

Prudence was summoned into Byers’ office and entered, eyes swinging around at the men assembled around her. She swallowed nervously and curtsied, looking to Mulder with apprehension. 

“Is there word of the Countess, my lord?” she said hopefully. 

“No,” Mulder answered, but did not -- could not -- go on. He was busy looking at her. He’d never noticed that her eyes were the same hazel-green as his own, that her hair was the exact shade. He found himself unable to speak. 

“Prudence,” said Skinner from the other side of the room. She looked to him. “My name is Walter Skinner. I’m an investigator on Bow Street and I’ve been hired by Lord Wexford.”

“To find the Countess? I’ll help in any way I can,” she said earnestly. 

Skinner merely nodded, not correcting her. “Thank you,” he said. “You have been working for Lord Wexford for several years, is that correct?” 

“Yes, sir,” she said, “I was hired as a maid at Henwick Priory when I turned seventeen.”

“Have you been happy working there?”

“Oh, very,” she said, for the first time giving a hesitant smile. “Lord Wexford is a kind and generous employer. I feel I have distinguished myself, such as a woman of my standing can. I was thrilled to be selected by Mrs. Paxton -- that’s Lord Wexford’s housekeeper -- to be the new Countess’s lady’s maid. Several of the other girls were hatefully envious, I can tell you. But I very much enjoy my job.”

“And where were you before you were hired at Henwick Priory?” Doggett asked. 

“At an estate not far from here, in fact,” Prudence said, “I was an orphan, you see, and I was taken on as a charity case. When I came of age, I was told that the charity that had arranged my employment as a child had another opportunity lined up at the Priory. With guaranteed employment and a pension! I could not pass it up.”

“Did you know the footman Alexander before he was hired at Wexford House?” Skinner inquired.

A look of distaste crossed her features. “I did not,” she said shortly. “It’s… it’s not my place to say,” she darted eyes quickly to Mulder, “but something about the man has never sat right with me.”

From the corner of his eye, Mulder saw Frohike shift on his feet.

“Is Prudence your given name?” Skinner said. 

“It is my middle name,” she explained, “there was an older scullery maid by the name of Samantha already working on the Fitzsimmons estate when I arrived.” Byers inhaled sharply. “I went by Prudence for the sake of simplicity.” 

“What-” Mulder finally spoke, “what is the name of the estate where you were raised?”

“It is a small estate called Harwood Hall,” she said. 

“And what of the gentleman who employed you there?” Skinner asked her. 

“Mr. Fitzsimmons?” she asked. “I do not know him well. We were told to keep out of the way, and he lived mostly in Town.”

“This Harwood Hall,” Mulder said, rising from his seat, “you say it is nearby?”

“Not ten miles from here,” Prudence said, “by the sea.”


	13. Chapter 13

Mulder, on his horse Hercule at the lead of what amounted to a well-outfitted cavalry, pounded down the stretch of road that led to Harwood Hall, the manse just coming into view. It was all thundering hooves behind him, and he could hear grunts of the horsed men that followed, could feel their thrilled energy at his back, and he was half-compelled to let out the war whoop of his Celtic forebears, riding into battle as they were, ready to save their damsel in distress. If it hadn't been for the generations of genteel decorum bred into him, he probably would have. 

The fields lay long on either side of the narrow road, dotted occasionally with sheep and ancient stone fences. The sea shone far to the right and came into the land at an angle, pushing in toward the thumb-sized house like a shining sapphire buttress. 

He was armed to the teeth, as were the men with him -- two pistols strapped to his hips and an old but perfectly balanced sword tight to his waist, the sheathed end of it tapping into Hercule’s flank and spurring him on. Walter and his Runner colleague Doggett were each carrying pistols — Doggett carrying an English flintlock blunderbuss in his left hand. Langly, who looked queasy on horseback and was not keeping his seat well, had what looked to be a long flintlock Kentucky plains rifle (said to be favored on the American Frontier), and Frohike, sturdy as a barnacle on his steely grey pony, had the intricately carved handle and stock of a Prussian target percussion rifle sticking out of an odd holster on his back. Byers carried a saber. Mulder couldn't help but wonder what a sight they made rolling along the English countryside at full gallop, their armory glinting in the sun. 

As they barreled closer, Mulder could see that the manor itself was not overly large, but had a long fence and tall gate. They would have to get through it just to get on the property. Perhaps riding in like the Roman Legion hadn't been the best idea, but his wife was close -- he could feel it -- and his heart would have nothing but war until she was by his side. 

Hercule had energy and heart to give, and Mulder could feel the animal ranging further and further ahead of the inferior horses giving chase behind them. In fact, when he looked back, he could see nothing but road dust and the occasional glint of metal.

Looking ahead, he could now see the house clearly, its brick the color of the sand on the shores surrounding it, and his eye caught movement at the building's entrance. Perhaps the fight was coming to them -- so be it. 

He eased back on the reins and murmured a low command to Hercule, who slowed his steps only enough for the cavalry behind them to ease closer, and the figure from the manse -- Mulder could see that it was single figure now, dressed in white -- was moving quickly toward the gate. Perhaps it was a servant who thought Mulder was the post. 

He wouldn't give them the chance to discover otherwise. 

He pulled his pistol out from his hip and cocked it, skidding Hercule to a halt on the slippery gravel, and throwing himself from the saddle as he did so to land in a crouch in front of the gate. He could hear the other riders pulling in behind him as he rose and raised his pistol to point at the person who had just swung open the weir. He could not yet make out their identity, blocked as they were by the ornate iron lock.

"Stand and deliver," he said with calibrated fury. 

And then he saw her face.

XxXxXxXxXxX 

“Stand and deliver,” said a voice with the steely edge of violence. There was a pistol aimed directly at her nose. It took her only a moment to look past the barrel to the man holding it. 

“Mulder!” she gasped, and launched herself at him. His arms came around her with the feeling of home and she allowed herself one brief moment of transcendent euphoria before she pulled away from him. 

“Good God, Scully, I-” he fumbled. She had clearly taken him by surprise. The men mounted behind him were all wearing equally shocked looks. 

“Away!” she said quickly, “Mulder, we must away!” 

Upon the heels of her statement came a calamitous blast, followed immediately by another. The horses threw their heads nervously. 

A balding man she didn’t know squared his jaw up and turned his horse away from the house, shouting, “On me!” before spurring away. 

Mulder practically leapt upon Hercule’s back and grabbed Scully around the waist, lifting her easily up into the saddle in front of him, and they were away before a third and fourth detonation burst from the house behind them. The other riders, Sir Byers and his associates among them, followed, their horses spurred along by fear. They were barely away when there was an absolutely massive explosion. Frohike’s pony screamed. 

Hercule was in the lead, despite having the added burden of a second rider, and rode on, unfazed. After several hundred yards, Mulder slowed the creature, holding Scully tightly to him, and turned the horse to look back on the estate. 

There was nothing left. Where once stood a large country house there was now just a smoking crater. Scully felt nothing but satisfaction. She supposed she should feel something for the life that she had taken, but her God believed in an eye for an eye, and so help her, when it came to that man, she did too. 

The other riders caught up with them and turned their horses to look as well. The balding man had fine, wire rim spectacles and looked at what was left of the house and then at her, giving her an assessing once-over.

“My lady,” the man said, “you did not, perchance, happen to find munitions somewhere on the estate, did you?”

“As a matter of fact,” Scully said, leaning back into the warm bulk of Mulder, “I did.”

XxXxXxXxXxX

“Well,” said Frohike as he dismounted his pony in front of the stables at Ashford Park, swinging his Prussian rifle over his shoulder, “we’re all dressed up and we’ve nowhere to go.”

A groom helped Scully dismount, then Mulder swung down behind her, handing over his reins, refusing to let his wife get so much as an arm’s length away from him. The other members of the rescue party were dismounting around them, scattering gravel at their feet and shaking hands. 

Suddenly, there was a shout from the manor and Suzanne came careening down the steps and running towards them. 

“You’ve done it!” she said, skidding to a stop in front of Scully and then wrapping her up in an embrace, “you’ve saved her!”

“Nay,” said Byers, stepping forward, “the lady has saved herself. We were but an armed escort bringing her home.”

Mulder felt a swell of pride momentarily override his intense sense of relief. His wife; intelligent, capable, resourceful. She had described her escape to the men on their slow ride back to Byers’s estate to the impressed astonishment of the horsed collective -- how she used her extensive knowledge of chemistry to escape the small cottage in which she had been imprisoned, how she found stores and stores of gunpowder and munitions in Spender’s stables and used them to ensure that the man never hurt anyone else ever again. 

Frohike himself had asked many questions, and with each answer, he would shake his head and look at Mulder, no doubt wondering what the Earl had done to deserve such a remarkable paradigm of a woman. 

Mulder wondered that, himself. 

As the group began wandering back toward the house, Mulder pulled Scully aside. 

“This must all be overwhelming. And I would like to hear all that happened to you -- when you are ready to share it -- but first, I must know one thing: Did he hurt you? Did any of them  _ hurt _ you?”

She reached up and cupped his cheek, and he closed his eyes and leaned into her hand. 

“Not in the way you fear,” she whispered. 

He reached up and put his hand over her own, holding it close. “I would take whatever suffering you have endured and make it my own.”

“Something tells me you already have,” she said. She was more right than she knew. “I would like to go to our chambers now, Mulder, and change out of this soiled and ruined dress. And I would like to take a bath. And then…” 

“Then?”

“Will you hold me?”

“I can do that,” he said. 

XxXxXxXxXxX

Mulder gently fingered the uneven ends of Scully’s shorn hair from where she lay tightly spooned up into his side. It felt so wonderful to be back in her husband’s arms.

“Does it look horrid?” she mumbled half into the pillow they shared. She knew he had loved her long tresses.

“You could never look horrid. It’s actually quite fetching. It highlights the elegant column of your neck. And if I’m honest, I can’t stop touching it.” He placed a soft kiss to the place where her jaw met her neck and she shivered, finally turning to face him. 

“Whatever will the  _ ton _ say?”

“They’ll say ‘what an extraordinary woman is the Countess of Wexford, and what an undeserving wretch she has for an Earl.’”

“Never.” She reached for his face and he kissed the tips of her fingers.

“I should have saved you. I should have done something about Spender, long ago. I never should have-“

She shushed him. “Mulder, I am frequently underestimated because of my sex. For once, I was able to use that fact to my advantage. I don’t ever want to hear you blame yourself for the reprehensible actions of another. You were not to blame. For any of it.”

He reached out and ran his fingers once again through what remained of her hair, looking at her with reverence. She was silent for a moment before reaching up and touching it, too.

“I suppose my hair will have plenty of time to grow out before we attend any events in Town,” she said.

“You don’t wish to return to London?” he asked, his voice a low murmur. 

“Most ladies I know retreat to their country homes for the duration of their confinement.” She watched closely for his reaction, and saw it in his eyes the moment realization hit -- they went from confusion to elation.

“Your… your confinement?” he asked breathily. She nodded, smiling. 

He grabbed her face in two hands and kissed her soundly, then pulled back the covers on the bed and moved down until his face was level with her abdomen. He lifted her shift until the bare skin of her belly was exposed, and leaned in to place a reverential kiss there, too. His mouth lingered. He whispered something she could not make out.

She felt a rush of yearning wash over her. “Mulder,” she whispered, and he looked up, his mossy eyes connecting with hers. They didn’t have to speak. He crawled his way back up her body slowly and kissed her softly, his weight resting on his hip, one hand in her hair, the other caressing her with a featherlight touch. She felt desire pool between her legs.

He pulled back and nosed his way gently down the curve of her jaw, flicking his tongue slowly as he eased his way along the column of tendons in her neck. Her head fell back on a blissful moan, and she threaded her fingers through his hair, letting the silken softness play about the skin of her hands, wanting to feel him -- all of him -- reveling in having him back at her side, within her grasp.

He drew back momentarily to pull his white lawn shirt up and over his head, dropping it to the floor. The space between them felt like a sea, and she realized in that moment that however deeply she thought she had loved him before she’d been taken by Spender was a pittance. The love she felt for him in this moment threatened to overwhelm her. She longed to feel him against her, inside of her, every unyielding edge and hard plane of him; she wanted to take all that he was and absorb him like water, like air. 

She reached for him. 

XxXxXxXxXxX

He marveled at her. The soft contours of her body called to him; her pliant skin, her lush, pearl-pink-tipped breasts, her soft seawater eyes. None of which compared to the rapier-sharp intelligence of her beautiful mind. It was like she was moulded from clay by the gods specifically for him. He was a hopeless wretch in love. And now there was a babe inside her belly. 

He felt an overwhelming tenderness toward her, at her resilience and strength in finding her way back to him, and he felt himself marveling at the miracle of life they’d created. 

He sat back on his haunches, roving his eyes over her, struck dumb.

And then she reached for him. 

“I need you,” she whispered, beseeching him, “I need to take you inside of me.  _ Please _ .” 

The blood thrummed inside of him.

He reached down and delicately parted her legs, taking himself in hand and gently thumbing the soft bud at the crest of her sex. She hissed a breath through her teeth and he guided himself, sliding straight home. 

Scully reached under his arms with both hands and wrapped them around his shoulders, pulling him tightly to her. He thrust up into her slowly, tenderly, keeping his weight on his elbows, framing her face with his arms. 

He could feel her pulse as it beat in her slick sheath and he took a breath, trying to control himself. He wanted this to be sweet, tender lovemaking -- a homecoming -- but with every stroke, he felt more and more desperate for release. 

A sob wrenched from her throat and she turned her face into his neck, pressing her teeth into the skin there. 

“Mulder,” she panted, her voice hungry with yearning, with palpable, unabashed need. 

He turned and pressed a soft kiss to her lips and then leaned back, grabbing her hips in both hands. He began to snap into her with more force, and her hips rose with each plunge, as desperate to meet him as he was to be buried deep inside of her. And then she threw her arms over her head, her hands pushing against the carved headboard of the bed, her head thrown back, and she keened an almost inhuman sound, her muscles gripping him in an endless, pulsing clutch. 

He ascended to a place beyond thought.

XxX

Mulder awoke once again with the smell of lavender in his nose, the soft curve of Scully’s behind pressed into him. He inhaled deeply and pulled her more tightly to him. 

He would stay here all week, all month, all year, if he could. But he needed to send word to Henwick Priory that he and the Countess would be arriving soon, and staying for the duration. 

He rose and gently extricated himself from around Scully, dressing as quickly and quietly as he could. He was just pulling on his Hessians when his wife inhaled deeply in the bed and rolled over, cracking an eye to look at him with a small smile on her face. 

“What time is it?” she croaked, her voice rough with sleep. 

There was an ormolu clock on the mantle of the bedroom, and Mulder peered at it before coming to sit on the bed next to her hip. 

“It’s just past nine o’clock. If you wish to go back to sleep, please do so.”

She stretched, brushing a hand down his arm to thread her fingers through his own. 

“I shall rise,” she said, “I’d like to write to my mother and visit with Suzanne. Would you mind calling for Prudence?”

Mulder hesitated briefly, but then rose and pulled the cord. It seemed only moments before the door to their chambers opened. 

“My lady!” Prudence came rushing into the room, a joyful look of relief on her face.

“Prudence,” said Scully fondly, reaching her hands out to recieve her. 

“Oh,  _ my lady _ ,” Prudence said again, taking Scully’s hands. She seemed to be overwhelmed with emotion. 

Mulder stepped forward. He had not spoken with Prudence since calling her in to meet the Bow Street Runners, and charging off the second she gave them the location of Spender’s Kent estate. The young woman eyed him warily before glancing back at her mistress. 

“You need not call the Countess that anymore,” he said calmly to her. 

Both women swung their eyes to him; Scully in confusion, Prudence in something close to fear. 

“And what should she call me?” Scully asked. 

“Sister,” Mulder said simply. “For that is what she is to me.”

“My lord?” Prudence queried. 

“Come,” Mulder said, pulling the envelope scrawled with a large X out of his pocket. “I’ve something to show you both.”

XxXxXxXxXxX 

**_EPILOGUE_ **

_ Several Years Later _

The spring air was deeply fragrant, the mossy banks of the ornamental lake a dazzling shade of green. The sun was so bright she sneezed.

"Bless you, my lady," said a gentle voice from behind her. 

Scully turned to thank Sir Byers from where he sat on a large blanket spread out on the grassy embankment just under an ancient oak on the north lawn of Henwick Priory. Byers was cradling a sleeping babe -- he and Suzanne's second, little Reynard, named for his Godfather. 

Scully turned back to where she had been watching -- peering at the arbor twenty yards away for the child's namesake. Mulder had taken three-year-old Clio into the vast gardens to look for butterflies, but they had been gone near to thirty minutes -- it was likely the child had been distracted by something or other in the terraced space -- she had, after all, inherited her mother's scientific curiosity. 

Just as she was about to turn away, she saw movement, and Clio came running out from the garden, her skirts flying out behind her. She wore a gleeful smile and her bright red curls glinted in the sun. 

"Mama!" she shouted as she approached, "we found a caterpillar!" 

Scully swept the girl up in her arms and pressed a kiss into the child's pink cheek. 

"Oh, you must tell me the color! We'll identify it." 

"Papa said it was a Cinnabar moth," Clio said, dropping her heavy head sleepily onto Scully's shoulder. The child had a tendency, like her father, to drop off at a moment's notice and it was nearing time for her afternoon lay-down. 

"Oh, he did, did he?" Scully said. Mulder was getting better at taxonomy, but he had a habit of misidentifying the things he classified for their children, if only to get a playful rise out of their mother.

Scully looked for said Papa and found him emerging from the gardens, walking slowly with his hands behind his back, patiently trailing William, the future Tenth Earl of Wexford, who had learned to walk only the month before and was toddling along jerkily, like a sailor in his cups. Scully caught eyes with the boy's father and he grinned at her, the smile crinkling the skin at his eyes. 

"I see your father found your little brother," Scully said, smoothing out Clio's pinafore. "Where is your Auntie Pru?"

Samantha had offered to take William along on the garden expedition when the boy began crying that his father was walking away. 

"She and Monica are cutting flowers for the picnic!" Clio answered, and turned in Scully's arms, wanting down. 

William finally toddled up and flopped down on the blanket next to Byers, and Mulder strode up to Scully smelling of grass and sunshine with an underlying trace of clover. He leaned down and captured her lips in a quick kiss. 

"My lady," he mumbled into her.

"My lord," she said, then looked down to see William attempting to dive into one of the baskets the footman had set out for their afternoon picnic.

"O-ho!" said Mulder as he swept up William away from the temptation, throwing the child into the air and catching him a moment later. The boy squealed in glee. "Not until everyone has arrived, little one," his father gently chided him. 

In what amounted to rather perfect timing, Frohike, Langly, Suzanne and the oldest Byers child Emma at that moment came tromping down the steps on the north side of the estate, just as Samantha and another woman emerged from the garden, each with an armful of pink tulips.

"Oh, what a lovely addition to our picnic!" Scully said to Samantha's bright smile. She kissed her sister-in-law's cheek. 

"It looks like Cli is about to drop off," Samantha grinned. 

"No I'm not, Auntie Pru," the child said on a large yawn. To the day, both Mulder and Scully sometimes called Samantha by her middle name out of habit and the children had latched onto the idea. 

"Do you want me to take her up to the nursery?" Samantha whispered. Scully shook her head. Samantha had been welcomed into the family without reservation, but at times was still not used to her elevated rank and attempted to do various tasks best left to the staff. It drove Mrs. Paxton batty. 

"Sit, Samantha," said Monica Reyes, Samantha's hired companion, who was arranging the flowers prettily in an empty basket, "put your feet up. Have a cup of tea." 

Initially Monica had been hired as companion, chaperone and etiquette tutor, drilling Samantha in the ways of the  _ ton _ , but the ladies were now very good friends and, thought Scully wistfully, perhaps something more. 

Mulder set his son down once again on the blanket and came up to Scully, putting his arms around her from behind. "That's good advice," he rumbled in her ear. She shivered slightly. He still had the ability to give her gooseflesh with a mere touch. 

"Perhaps I will," she sighed happily, leaning into him.

“Ah, the cavalry has arrived!” said Mulder as the group from the house approached. 

“Good company, good wine, good welcome, can make good people,” Frohike quoted, letting go of Emma’s hand. She and Clio -- who had found a second wind of energy upon seeing her friend -- darted off to play on the spacious lawn. 

“I count myself in nothing else so happy,” Mulder quoted back, “As in a soul remembering my good friends.”

“Shakespeare is all well and good,” said Langly, whinging ever so slightly, “but can we eat?”

“Champagne first!” Mulder announced, nodding to a footman who had been waiting nearby with the refreshment. 

Frohike’s eyebrows rose as he took the proffered glass and he peered knowingly at the lord and lady of the house, who still stood in an embrace. “What’s the occasion?” 

“We’ve an announcement,” Scully smiled, and Mulder reached down to caress the bump in Scully’s belly that was just beginning to make itself known. 

“I knew it!” clapped Suzanne. 

“Again?” gaped Langly.

Mulder winked at his bespeckled friend and raised his glass. “To good friends reunited,” he said, “and the blessing of another child.”

The gathered party raised their glasses in a toast. 

Frohike looked up, thoughtful. “A third Wexford babe, and I’ve yet to find a wife.”

“My friend,” Mulder said, pressing a loving kiss into Scully’s hair before looking up at him, “never give up on a miracle.”

THE END


End file.
